title: The use of STOPP/START criteria as a screening tool for assessing the appropriateness of medications in the elderly population.
abstract: Although numerous initiatives and interventions have been developed to promote medication safety, medication incidents still remain an important cause of hospitalization. To avoid this, it is important for physicians to prescribe safely. To date, the Beers criteria have been the most widely used explicit criteria for assessing the appropriateness of medications in the elderly, but they do have limitations. The more recent STOPP/START criteria were developed in the hope of addressing the deficiencies observed in the Beers criteria. This article gives an overview of STOPP/START criteria and its applications, and reviews the studies that assessed medication appropriateness using STOPP/START and/or the Beers criteria.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. maypslam@hku.hk
authors.forename: May P S
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Lam
authors.forename: Bernard M Y
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Cheung
mesh_terms: D016907:Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting Systems; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D004347:Drug Interactions; D017723:Drug Utilization Review; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D057970:Inappropriate Prescribing; D008508:Medication Errors / Q000517:prevention & control*; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D019338:Polypharmacy; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000592:standards; D055553:Prescription Drugs / Q000009:adverse effects* / Q000627:therapeutic use*
chemical_list: D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D055553:Prescription Drugs