J Korean Geriatr Soc.  2013 Mar;17(1):28-36.

Comparison Between Beers Criteria and Screening Tool of Older Person's Prescriptions as a Screening Tool for the Detection of Potentially Inappropriate Medicines and Adverse Drug Events in the Elderly Patients

• Lee JH
• Roh JH
• Suh YW
• Lee JH
• Lee ES
• Lee BK
• Kim KI
• Kim CH

Abstract

BACKGROUND
Beers criteria are used to identify the potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) in elderly patients. However, the criteria have limitations such as lacking consideration of drug-drug and duplicated prescriptions. The aim of this study is to compare the efficacy of newly developed screening tool of older person's prescriptions (STOPP) with Beers criteria in identifying PIMs and adverse drug events (ADEs) in elderly patients.
METHODS
We included 115 elderly patients older than 65 years who visited the outpatients' clinic or have been hospitalized for medical illness. Comprehensive geriatric assessments including medication review by the pharmacists were performed by the multidisciplinary team. Beers criteria and STOPP were used to find out PIMs. The association between PIMs defined by both criteria with ADEs was also evaluated.
RESULTS
A total of 59 patients (50.4%) by Beers criteria and 76 patients (65.0%) by STOPP had been prescribed with PIMs. Compared with Beers criteria, STOPP had advantage in identifying more PIMs. In addition, STOPP could identify more ADEs related medications than Beers criteria. STOPP was also useful to detect duplicate drug class prescription and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for renal impaired patients.
CONCLUSION
STOPP criteria PIMs can detect more duplicated prescription and are significantly associated with avoidable ADEs in older individuals compared with that of Beers criteria PIMs.

Keyword

Potentially inappropriate medicines; STOPP; Beers; Adverse drug events

MeSH Terms

Aged
Beer
Drug Toxicity
Geriatric Assessment
Humans
Imidazoles
Mass Screening
Nitro Compounds
Pharmacists
Prescriptions
Imidazoles
Nitro Compounds