Eventos adversos relacionados a medicamentos envolvendo idosos no Brasil.

Abstract

The use of medications is complex and involves the risk of harm. In this context, adverse drug-related events (ADE) comprise one of the possible consequences of the process of using medications, being incidents that always involve the occurrence of damage. It is known that ADEs frequently occur among elderly people, who are considered a high-risk population for damage resulting from the use of medications, due to their physiological and pathological characteristics and the complexity of their pharmacotherapy. However, studies describing the occurrence of ADE involving elderly people in Brazil are scarce. The objective of this study is to describe suspected ADEs involving elderly people reported in the VigiMed system of the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa). To this end, a descriptive study was carried out, referring to notifications made between 01/01/2019 and 03/31/2023, relating to elderly people (age ≥ 60 years) and medications. Notifications were characterized using descriptive statistics (by month, type of notification, type of notifier and categories belonging to “A PINCH”); the patients involved (gender, age group) and the reactions/symptoms (“serious” or “non-serious”, those that involved “life-threatening” or “death”, System Organ Class – SOC and medication errors). A total of 161,685 notifications of suspected ADEs were identified, 34,319 (21.2%) of which corresponded to elderly people. The majority of notifications (74.4%, n=25,524) had at least one health professional as the notifier. The majority of suspected ADEs were related to elderly women (58.5%, n=20,089). Most reports contained at least one “serious” reaction/symptom (52.0%; n=17,838) and 61.7% (n=21,173) of them involved medications included in the mnemonic “A PINCH”. The disproportionality analysis revealed that the elderly not only had a higher proportion of reports containing severe reactions/symptoms compared to adults (ROR = 1,35; IC95% 1,311,39but also the proportion of reports containing medications belonging to the “A PINCH” list was higher in the elderly group compared to adults (ROR = 1,58; IC95% 1,53-1,62). From this study, it was possible to analyze ADEs involving elderly people, highlighting the need for effective systemic measures to minimize the risks of ADEs, especially among the elderly, and thus guarantee better safety in the use of medications in this age group.