April 2015 Study: "What Are Priorities For Deprescribing for Elderly Patients?"

This Canadian study states the following:

"Polypharmacy and inappropriate medication use among older adults contribute to adverse drug reactions, falls, cognitive impairment, noncompliance, hospitalization and mortality. While deprescribing - tapering, reducing or stopping a medication - is feasible and relatively safe, clinicians find it difficult to carry out. Deprescribing guidelines would facilitate this process. The aim of this paper is to identify and prioritize medication classes where evidence-based deprescribing guidelines would be of benefit to clinicians."

Three of the top five drugs that were considered "priorities" were psychiatric meds, as per the following statement:

"The final five priorities were benzodiazepines, atypical antipsychotics, statins, tricyclic antidepressants, and proton pump inhibitors; nine other drug classes were also identified as being in need of evidence-based deprescribing guidelines."

Here's the abstract:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25849568