ReviewJournal of clinical medicine2023
An Overview of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses on the Effect of Medication Interventions Targeting Polypharmacy for Frail Older Adults.
Review in Journal of clinical medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Interventions to Optimize Medication Management in Older Adults: An Umbrella Review of Systematic Reviews.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2026Pooled it
- Factors associated with frailty in older people: an umbrella review.BMC geriatrics · 2024Pooled it
- Pharmacist interventions in Asian healthcare environments for older people: a systematic review and meta-analysis on hospitalization, mortality, and quality of life.BMC geriatrics · 2024Pooled it
- Prevalence of and Risk Factors for Drug-Related Readmissions in Older Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Drugs & aging · 2024Pooled it
- Call for papers: strengthening primary care through integrated clinical pharmacy services-models, outcomes and implementation.International journal of clinical pharmacy · 2026Article
- Observation and Prevention of Caregiver-Related Medication Errors in Community Pharmacies: A Cross-Sectional Study Across Urban, Town, and Rural Settings.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Optimizing polypharmacy management in older adults: impact of an interdisciplinary outpatient clinic on long-term function and quality of life.European geriatric medicine · 2026Observational
- Supporting Older People Living With Frailty to Self-Manage Multiple Medicines: An Experience-Based Co-Design of a Complex Intervention Developed in UK Primary Care.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2025Article
- Multimorbidity, medications, and their association with falls, physical activity, and cognitive functions in older adults: multicenter study in Sri Lanka.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Defining, identifying and addressing problematic polypharmacy within multimorbidity in primary care: a scoping review.BMJ open · 2024Article
- 'I think we could probably do more': an interview study to explore community pharmacists' experiences and perspectives of frailty and optimising medicines use in frail older adults.Age and ageing · 2024Article
- Medication Review: What's in a Name and What Is It about?Pharmacy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- 'It's a job to be done'. Managing polypharmacy at home: A qualitative interview study exploring the experiences of older people living with frailty.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Frailty refers to the lack of resilience and a reduction in a person's ability to recover following a health problem, and it is increasingly becoming a challenging aspect of ageing populations. Many older adults are exposed to polypharmacy; i.e., they continue to be on medications without timely re-evaluation. Medication reviews have proven successful in managing polypharmacy in the general population, but there is uncertainty regarding their effect among frail older adults. This overview of published systematic reviews assesses the impact of medication reviews on polypharmacy in frail older adults. Embase was searched from its inception to January 2021 and 28 systematic reviews were identified, out of which 10 were included in the overview. Medication reviews were the most common intervention in 8 out of 10 systematic reviews. The frailty score was reported as an outcome in one systematic review that found no evidence for fundamental pharmacological effects on frailty. Six systematic reviews reported a statistically significant reduction in the number of inappropriately prescribed medications. Four systematic reviews reported on hospital admissions, with two of them reporting a decrease in hospitalisations. The quality assessment was moderate in six and critically low in four of the systematic reviews. We conclude that medication reviews help in reducing the use of inappropriate medications in frail older adults, but that there is insufficient evidence in terms of frailty score and hospital admissions.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.