• Br J Clin Pharmacol · Aug 2008

    Inappropriate benzodiazepine use in older adults and the risk of fracture.

    • Cornelis S van der Hooft, Mariëtte W C J Schoofs, Gijsbertus Ziere, Albert Hofman, Huibert A P Pols, Miriam C J M Sturkenboom, and Bruno H Ch Stricker.
    • Pharmaco-epidemiology Unit, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
    • Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2008 Aug 1; 66 (2): 276-82.

    AimsThe Beers criteria for prescribing in elderly are well known and used for many drug utilization studies. We investigated the clinical value of the Beers criteria for benzodiazepine use, notably the association between inappropriate use and risk of fracture.MethodsWe performed a nested case-control study within the Rotterdam Study, a population-based cohort study in 7983 elderly. The proportion of 'inappropriate' benzodiazepine use according to the Beers criteria was compared between fracture patients and controls. 'Inappropriate' use for elderly implies use of some long-acting benzodiazepines and some intermediate/short-acting ones exceeding a suggested maximum daily dose. Also, alternative criteria were applied to compare the risk of fracture. Cases were defined as persons with incident fracture between 1991 and 2002 who were current benzodiazepine users on the fracture date. Controls were matched on fracture date and were also current benzodiazepine users.ResultsThe risk of fracture in 'inappropriate' benzodiazepine users according to the Beers criteria was not significantly different from 'appropriate' users [odds ratio (OR) 1.07, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.72, 1.60]. However, a significantly higher risk of fracture was found in 'high dose' users and a longer duration of use (14-90 days), irrespective of the type of benzodiazepine (OR 3.45, 95% CI 1.38, 8.59).ConclusionsThese findings suggest that inappropriate benzodiazepine use according to the Beers criteria is not associated with increased risk of fracture. Daily dose and longer duration of use (>14 days) is associated with higher risk of fracture, irrespective of the type of benzodiazepine prescribed.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…