Cara Santamaria

I kept taking it.

I called in for refills each time.

We haven't really followed up in a while.

And after a while, there are so many drugs on many older adults' protocol, their regimen, that there's no one person overseeing drug interaction.

There's no one person taking on the responsibility to say, is this drug still necessary for this patient?

Or is there a different version of this drug that's on offer that may have fewer side effects or fewer interactions?

And so I think even the pit, I'll say it again, those of you who aren't watching it, it's so good.

There's an episode where the ER docs recognize that a patient is having some balance and coordination issues and they go through his entire drug list and realize that he's taking drugs regularly.

that he no longer needs, that are making it hard for him to live independently.

And once he gets off those drugs as an older adult, his balance and coordination dramatically improves.

You know, that's a best-case scenario.

That's not often the case.

Yeah, in this study, after a year, a quarter of the participants who were over 60 who discontinued the drug still maintained their healthy thyroid function.

Lots of them were already lowering their doses at that time.

And further inquiry is identifying a group, a select group of adults over 60 who may not need a drug that was historically thought of as a lifelong drug once they reach a certain age.

Outpatient as well.

Yeah.

And I think there are places, you know, like at my hospital on outpatient, we'd reconcile drugs all the time.

But I think that we could do more.

We, you know, it's one thing to reconcile a drug list and say, are you still taking this?