According to a new study, older people who take a combination of at least five different medications are 21 per cent more likely to fall over. NICE recommends that people with multimorbidity (which is defined as mainly taking 10 or more different drugs) are given tailored care. But, researchers from the Leicester Diabetes Centre studied the impact of taking multiple medications, and found even five different drugs can have a bad effect.
Studies show that falls are the fifth leading cause of death in elderly adults and explain more than 80 per cent of injury-related admissions to hospital in this population. Professionals have advised that the way to handle this is to review these patients and their medications and monitoring their risk of falls.
