[Avoidable hospital drug prescription in the elderly. A review of the literature]. / Iatrogénie médicamenteuse hospitalière évitable et personnes âgées.

Elderly persons are particularly exposed to drug reactions, especially drug interactions subsequent to multiple prescriptions. It is also recognized that the drug risk is the leading hospital risk involving 1 to 10% of all hospitalized patients. An analysis of the avoidable nature of drug reactions leads to consideration of a sequence of 4 events leading to drug exposure: prescription, delivery, administration and compliance. Each event in this sequence corresponds to a distinct person: physician, pharmacist, nurse, patient. This suggests that the prevention of drug reactions in hospitalized elderly persons requires implementation of an "alert-causal attributability-avoidability-prevention" system by the healthcare teams where physicians, pharmacists, and nurses work in close coordination with the patient.