With people aged 65 years and older currently making up the fastest growing age group throughout the world, the demographic revolution of an aging society will inevitably lead to increased pressure to develop a rationalistic and age-tailored process of diagnosis and treatment among the elderly. As aging people often suffer from several chronic diseases and are being treated with multiple medications concurrently, unwanted drug interactions occur more frequently. Whereas recent approaches have recommended to remove particular drugs from the medication regimen to avoid adverse effects, Drug Therapy for the Elderly underlines both indispensable and dispensable elements of drug treatment in order to provide an overall assessment of drugs suitable for the aged. In view of the multimorbidity and polypharmacy situations experienced by elderly patients, this book takes into account the special needs and requirements shown by this group, thus serving as a timely reference for physicians who treat the elderly.

If you?re a pharmacist, nurse, or physician involved in caring for elderly patients, you?ll definitely want to take advantage of the concise review of the most important drugs for gastrointestinal problems in Gastrointestinal Drug Therapy in the Elderly. Compact, clear, and concise, this new volume will give you vital information concerning drug therapy for the elderly as presented by some of the world?s most authoritative, qualified professionals. Your knowlege of effective drug therapies will expand, and you?ll find new avenues of application for your treatment methods. Gastrointestinal Drug Therapy in the Elderly brings out your practical side, giving you method after method for dealing with the gastrointestinal maladies of elderly patients. Its scope is broad and contemporary, covering everything from gastroesophageal reflux disease to peptic ulcers, from inflammatory bowel disease to constipation and diarrhea. Specifically, you?ll get pragmatic guidance in the following areas: heartburn causes and treatments gastritis and peptic ulcers inflammatory bowel disease case studies of drug effects on the gastrointestinal tract You?ll also receive in this useful volume a review of basic pathophysiology and the effects of drugs on the GI tract. Filled with useful case studies and recent findings on drug use, Gastrointestinal Drug Therapy in the Elderly is your guide to practicality and heightened success in the treatment of persistent gastrointestinal problems in your elderly patients.

Cardiovascular drug therapy has markedly progressed in the recent decades. Not only have new drugs been introduced to clinical practice, but new classes of drugs have been developed. While in 1960 the practicing cardiolo gist had a selection of about only ten drugs, in 1987 about 150 drugs are routinely used in cardiovascular diseases. Elderly patients, however, usually do not enjoy the full benefit of this progress. This might be due to lack of knowledge, a conservative approach, or the worldwide tendency not to try new drugs in the elderly. It is now clear that the majority of patients that will be treated in car diovascular clinics will be, in the near future, elderly patients. Even now, elderly patients form about one-third of the patients with cardiovascular diseases. These patients are approached, however, according to criteria devel oped for younger populations. This is despite the fact that elderly patients differ from younger ones in most aspects, including pathology, epidemiol ogy, pathophysiology, diagnostic approach, management, pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, rehabilitation, and supportive treatment. It is the purpose of this book to present to the clinician all drugs with which there is clinical experience in the elderly or which might be potentially useful for the elderly with cardiovascular diseases. The data are presented without the authors taking a position. This should allow the clinicians to make their own selection and individualize treatment, vii viii Preface based on a wide data base. Comparative data are presented only when specific comparative studies were performed.

One of the greatest advances in Geriatric Medicine during the last quarter of a century has been the increased realization of the possibilities of treatment for elderly patients. Neglect has been replaced by a more optimistic therapeutic endeavour and countless old people have benefitted from this approach. But there is also a drawback, and this is the risk of hazardous side effects of medication which are often directly proportional to the biological potency of the drug and may be unpredictably increased due to changes in the senile organism. In fact the anatomical and biological changes in old age alter both the kinetics of most drugs and the receptor response. On account of these changes the individual tolerance of aged patients to drug therapy may be quite different from that of younger subjects. Thus for a variety of reasons elderly patients receive more drugs, but they are at a higher risk of encountering adverse reactions, which often show atypical clinical features. We can therefore speak of "geriatric iatrogenic disorders" and point out that some of these side effects are determined by a complex pathogenesis due to the particular pathophysiological condition in the elderly. It is important to encourage the habit of individ ually evaluating potential risk versus expected advantages of drugs in keeping with the same principles adopted in the evaluation of cost/benefit ratio.

How can we safely and effectively treat musculoskeletal disorders in this fast-growing population? Musculoskeletal Drug Therapy for Geriatric Patients is an essential reference for pharmacists, physicians, and nurses who plan treatment for elderly patients suffering from post-menopausal osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and gout or hyperuricemia. The medical cost of these common ailments is staggering: osteoporosis alone causes more than 1.5 million fractures each year with annual costs to the health system of approximately $14 billion. The human cost--in pain, disfigurement, restricted movement, and lost work--is incalculable. Today pioneering research is being done, and new drugs have become available to alleviate patients’suffering. Musculoskeletal Drug Therapy for Geriatric Patients offers detailed discussions of the newest drug treatments and recent findings on older medications. For example, many authorities agree that acetominophen should be frontline therapy of degenerative arthritis in the elderly, yet the most common adverse drug reaction of geriatric patients in long-term care is for NSAID gastropathy. This book suggests safer options, including the newest COX-2 inhibitors and disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs. Musculoskeletal Drug Therapy for Geriatric Patients offers clear strategies for the assessment and treatment of these painful, debilitating disorders in the elderly. Including tables and charts that comprehensively list test results, Musculoskeletal Drug Therapy for Geriatric Patients provides solid advice on the issues of medical management of these common diseases. This valuable book examines specific issues, including: the newest COX-2 inhibitors and how they work the evaluation, diagnosis, and management of osteoporosis osteoarthritis and its drug therapy a scholarly assessment of geriatric rheumatoid arthritis and its treatment. dosage, contraindications, and possible negative effects of various medications determining the need for chronic prophylactic therapy in patients with gout or hyperuricemia Although none of these musculoskeletal diseases can yet be cured, effective drug therapy can keep them in check. Musculoskeletal Drug Therapy for Geriatric Patients will help you give your patients the most powerful new treatments with the fewest side effects, thereby improving their quality of life.

This text presents a totally nursing-focused framework for teaching and learning nursing pharmacology, and "places the patient" at the center of all drug administration decisions and considerations. The book presents core drug knowledge using prototypes of different drug classes and emphasizes core patient variables that influence the patient's response to therapy. This thoroughly updated Third Edition covers newly approved drugs, has separate chapters on drugs affecting fungal and viral infections, and includes more pathophysiology information. FDA Black Box warnings have been added to the discussion of each prototype when applicable, and safety alerts have been added to emphasize prevention of common medication errors. A companion Website offers student and instructor ancillaries including NCLEX®-style questions, pathophysiology animations, medication administration videos, and dosage calculation quizzes.

Medication costs and common drug-related problems, such as misapplication of therapy, medication misuse, and adverse effects, can often be avoided or reduced. Geriatric Drug Therapy Interventions will help you get better outcomes with your patients as it points out pitfalls to avoid and provides you with logical principles for administering drug therapy. Offering guidelines, advice, and gentle reminders, this book shows you the importance of properly documenting patient problems and of considering the entire medical history of your patients. It also helps you perform fall and psychoactive drug risk assessments and address under-recognized and undertreated problems such as malnutrition, depression, sensory deficits, anemia, osteoporosis, and pressure ulcers. As Geriatric Drug Therapy Interventions clarifies, increased consultant pharmacist involvement in comprehensive pharmaceutical services results in the reduction of drug-related problems and medication-associated costs with long-term care patients. Using this book's helpful and substantive interventions, you can improve clinical, economic, and humanistic outcomes in your practice. For this purpose, Geriatric Drug Therapy Interventions discusses: a study designed to teach pharmacy students to identify, document, solve, and prevent medication-related problems providing patient-focused care and assuming responsibility for patient outcomes reimbursing pharmacists for performing cognitive service and cost-savings activities how the prevalence of drug-related problems that influence the need for hospital and nursing home admissions increases with age reasons for patient noncompliance NSAID-associated gastritis, gastrointestinal bleeding, drug-induced delirium, incontinence, and constipation why the advent of managed care does not bode well for the overall health outcomes of the elderly Pharmacists, physicians, and other health care providers can't control all aspects of drug use, but there are many practical steps you can take to help your patients use their prescriptions appropriately. Geriatric Drug Therapy Interventions will help you monitor the efficacy of drug therapy, guide patients who are exasperated with being poked, prodded, and barraged with medications, and work together to develop therapy patterns and schedules that are effective and comfortable.

Individualized Drug Therapy for Patients: Basic Foundations, Relevant Software and Clinical Applications focuses on quantitative approaches that maximize the precision with which dosage regimens of potentially toxic drugs can hit a desired therapeutic goal. This book highlights the best methods that enable individualized drug therapy and provides specific examples on how to incorporate these approaches using software that has been developed for this purpose. The book discusses where individualized therapy is currently and offers insights to the future. Edited by Roger Jelliffe, MD and Michael Neely, MD, renowned authorities in individualized drug therapy, and with chapters written by international experts, this book provides clinical pharmacologists, pharmacists, and physicians with a valuable and practical resource that takes drug therapy away from a memorized ritual to a thoughtful quantitative process aimed at optimizing therapy for each individual patient. - 2018 PROSE Awards - Honorable Mention, Clinical Medicine: Association of American Publishers - Uses pharmacokinetic approaches as the tools with which therapy is individualized - Provides examples using specific software that illustrate how best to apply these approaches and to make sense of the more sophisticated mathematical foundations upon which this book is based - Incorporates clinical cases throughout to illustrate the real-world benefits of using these approaches - Focuses on quantitative approaches that maximize the precision with which dosage regimens of potentially toxic drugs can hit a desired therapeutic goal