By DAVID KILLICK
March 19, 2008 12:00am
ELDERLY people in Tasmanian nursing homes are given sleeping tablets at a much higher rate than their interstate counterparts, a new study has found.
Half of the state's nursing-home residents are prescribed benzodiazepines, compared with about one third of residents interstate. The University of Tasmania is carrying out a project to radically cut benzodiazepine use after research by PhD student Juanita Westbury uncovered the high rate of prescribing. Professor Gregory Peterson of the university's School of Pharmacy said the use of benzodiazepines was associated with an increased risk of falls and hip fractures and a reduced quality of life. "There's data from Sydney showing perhaps 35 per cent of residents are on benzodiazepines and in Tasmania it's more like 50 per cent -- it's quite a bit higher," he said.
While much of the use of the drugs was medically necessary, they were sometimes over-prescribed. "It's for sleeping or they are sometimes used perhaps to control behaviour with dementia which they're not really recommended for," Prof Peterson said.
"The idea is to try to improve practice here -- to try to reduce it. "The biggest issue with these sedative drugs is the risk of falls and therefore hip fractures and therefore quality of life, it's one of the greatest dangers. "They're well known to be the greatest risk factors in causing falls in older people." The solution was informing health professionals about different approaches, he said. "It's largely an educational focus on GPs and nursing home staff and also carers and relatives because there probably is an element of that too where relatives don't want to see their mother or grandmother distressed or with abnormal behaviour or aggressiveness," Prof Peterson said.
Eight researchers will work on an 18-month project to cut the rate at which benzodiazepines are prescribed in the state's nursing homes. Tasmania dominated the latest round of federal pharmaceutical research funding with four out of 12 projects approved nationwide attracting almost $730,000.
SOURCE: themercury
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