Certain medicines are considered potentially inappropriate (PIM) for elderly people as they increase the risk of adverse drug events (ADE) and because safer alternative therapies are available on the market. In this context, in order to identify the instruments that assess the quality of medical prescriptions for elderly and to determine which drugs are considered PIM, a bibliographic survey was conducted in PUBMED, LILACS and PAHO databases, in February and March/2010. The search strategy included the use of health descriptors and a manual search in the references cited by selected papers. During the period of data collection, 15 instruments were identified. In 2012, with the publication of the update of Beers criteria, this instrument was included in the... |