• Little attention has been paid to quality of life and functional decline as a result of drug use, but it is an important factor
• Studies have shown that multiple drug use decreases the ability of the elderly persons to perform basic activities of daily living and increases the number of symptoms reported
• Further, in an outpatient study of demented patients, 12% were found to have worse cognitive impairment due to drug effects
• This improved when the offending drugs were discontinued

Copyright 1999 by the GEC