Some 14% of older people in Ireland have been prescribed inappropriate medication, while 30% have not been prescribed a medication that they should have been, a new study has found.

Researchers from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and Trinity College Dublin (TCD) set out to investigate the prevalence of potentially inappropriate prescribing (PIP) in people over the age of 65.

PIP in older people is a term used to describe medications that should usually be avoided by this age group, or where the dose or frequency of administration of the medication should not be exceeded.

The researchers also looked at prescribing omissions - where people were not prescribed clinically indicated medications.

The study found that 14% of people over the age of 65 in Ireland had been prescribed an inappropriate medication at least once in their lifetime, a situation described as ‘worrying' by lead researcher, Dr Rose Galvin, of the RCSI.

"We found that the most frequently inappropriate prescribed drugs were non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory medications which were dispensed to patients with moderate to severe hypertension (high blood pressure), and aspirin dispensed to those with no history of coronary, cerebral or peripheral vascular symptoms," she noted.

The study also found that 30% of people over the age of 65 had not been prescribed a clinically indicated medication.

"We found that the most common prescribing omission was antidepressant drugs in the presence of patients with moderate to severe depressive symptoms that could last at least three months," Dr Galvin said.

The researchers found a direct link between PIP, prescribing omissions and polypharmacy, which is the use of more than one medication by a patient.

"It is clear that doctors and pharmacists who dispense these medications must be extra-vigilant when dispensing and prescribing medicines to their patients. Better efforts should be directed to place particular focus on appropriateness of medication issued to patients both with respect to under and over-prescribing," Dr Galvin insisted.

Details of these findings are published in the European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.