Use of anticholinergic drugs among the elderly and a comparison between risk scales: a population-based study

The pattern of morbidity and mortali-ty has changed in recent years due to the increase in chronic noncommunicable diseases, leading to multiple comorbidities and the use of several medications. The scope of the study was to eval-uate the anticholinergic drugs used by elderly people, according to risk scales. It involved a pop-ulation-based cross-sectional study with elderly people. Socioeconomic factors, health problems, and medication use were investigated in the pre-vious 15 days. The Anticholinergic Drug Scale (ADS), the Anticholinergic Risk Scale (ARS) and the Anticholinergic Cognitive Burden Scale (ACB) were used for risk classification according to anticholinergic activity of the drugs. A total of 1451 elderly people were interviewed and 1305 used medications, 60.7% of which with anticho-linergic action, especially among the 80-year-old age bracket and the less educated. In total, 5703 drugs were used, 1282 (22.5%) of which with anticholinergic action. Kappa agreement of 0.63 was observed when assessing the ACB and ADS risk scales. The prevalence of the use of drugs with anticholinergic action was high, and attention should be paid to the consequences related to their use, with a view to more rational decision-making in clinical practice.