About 100,000 older Americans are hospitalized for adverse events per year, and most of these emergencies come from four common drugs, according to new research.
The four types of drugs - two for diabetes and two blood-thinning agents - two-thirds of emergency admissions related to drugs.
"Among the thousands of drugs available for older patients, caused a small group of anticoagulants and drugs for diabetes, a high proportion of emergency admissions for adverse events among older Americans," said the study author Dr. Daniel Budnitz, director of US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program of drug safety.
Drugs previously designated as "high risk" were involved in only 1.2 percent of the hospitals, the study found.
Working with a nationally representative database, the CDC researchers identified over 5000 cases of drug-related adverse events that have occurred in people over 65 years, from 2007 to 2009 and used this to estimate the population.
