Thursday, November 24, 2011

A Thin Line

For some drugs there is a thin line between effective use and damaging use.  Often, it is difficult to determine when that line has been crossed.  Combine these problems with the fact that 40% of those of us over 65 take between five and nine medications a day and you have a problem which manifests itself in a trip to a hospital's emergency ward. 

More than two-thirds of the trips old folks take to emergency wards are due to four medications.  Warfarin, a blood thinner usually known as Coumadin (and sometimes as rat poison) causes one-third of these trips. Diabetes, whether from insulin injections or drugs taken orally, account for 25% of trips to emergency. Aspirin and other drugs that prevent blood clotting make up 13% of the trips.

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