>> After the working group leader Rudolf Bals welcomed the event participants, Prof. Dr. med. Ingo Füsgen, Department of Geriatrics at the University of Witten/Herdecke, said the word. In his lecture entitled “Multimedication and polypharmacotherapy in old age” he introduced the problem of health care for older patients. According to Füsgen, certain clinical pictures involve a higher level of multimorbidity. “You can talk about health education and prevention as much as you like,” said the doctor, but there are age-related diseases. “An eighty-year-old person has the same risk of developing dementia in both Nigeria and Germany,” he made clear. Large patient studies also showed that dementia sufferers in particular have a high level of comorbidity
and would have to be hospitalized more frequently. Dementia and hospitals are therefore currently an important topic.

Füsgen: “Higher chance of becoming demented!”
The speaker then explained why drug therapy is problematic in old age. On the one hand, patients take several medications at the same time, on average for four diseases that require treatment. However, people with four different illnesses have a higher chance of developing dementia, emphasized Füsgen. These are primarily chronically ill, very old patients. The expert demonstrated this with the following figures: A third of those with chronic illnesses take four or more medications, and medication consumption is highest in the 85 to 94 year old age group. In addition, a large number of drug users are not yet included in studies and are therefore underestimated.
As an example, Füsgen used a 72-year-old patient who suffered from ten illnesses that needed to be treated. In this context, the expert summed up the problem as follows: “10 percent of patients are under-medicated, 19 percent are under-medicated, and individual drug effects are also common in old age.” He referred to the “Deutsche Ärzteblatt”. whose calculations from 2012 estimated that three to four people over the age of 65 would be taking potentially inadequate medication. “That is an incredibly dangerous statement,” Füsgen stated, “that means that the doctors are bad,” he summed up.
A study with old people's homes would also have shown that the number of adverse drug events (UAE) is directly related to the number of medications administered. The number of days until an ADE occurred was recorded - the result: the more medication was administered, the faster and the more side effects occurred. “So the question is, how can medications that cause the problematic side effects be replaced?” says Füsgen.

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