Acute Drug Reactions Among the Elderly

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Abstract
Research in the field of social gerontology has not examined drug use and abuse among the aged despite the potential significance of this issue to many students of gerontology. This report, based on an analysis of the records of patients who were treated for acute drug reactions at jackson memorial Hospital in miami, Florida, during 1972, examines characteristics of acute drug reactions among a sample of 60 elderly patients and compares these characteristics with those of other age cohorts. The findings show that acute drug reactions were more likely to occur among whites and females,that a substantial number of the reactions followed the ingestion of two or more substances, that roughly one-third of the admissions were directly related to suicide attempts, and that the vast majority of acute drug reactions among the elderly admissions involved the ingestion of legally anufactured and distributed drugs.

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