Identification of a Set of Patient-Related Features to Foster Safe Prescribing of Specific Antipsychotics in the Elderly With Dementia

Background: Antipsychotics (APs) are widely used to manage behavioral and psychiatric symptoms in dementia, although with a variety of adverse drug reactions. Therefore, it is important to know which patient-related features should be considered to foster a safe prescribing of these medications. Objectives: To compile and validate a set of patient-related features (PRFs) to foster safe prescribing of specific APs in the elderly with dementia; and to evaluate the feasibility of using them in clinical practice by analyzing the exhaustiveness of medical records. Method: A rapid literature review was the starting point, where PRFs were identified through a search in PubMed combined with information from the Summary of Product Characteristics (SmPCs). In the next step, a two-round e-Delphi survey was undertaken, where a total of 450 participants were invited by e-mail, including prescribers and specialists in benefit-risk assessment. Finally, a cross-sectional study was undertaken, where 100 patients were randomly extracted from the psychiatric hospital database. Outcomes were defined as the assessment of the clinical relevance and feasibility of the PRFs, and the level of exhaustiveness of these features in medical records. Data analysis was performed using univariate statistics (IBM SPSS v.23.0). Results: A total of 92 experts participated in the e-Delphi. Forty-seven PRFs obtained consensus, where 12 were applicable to haloperidol, 14 to olanzapine/risperidone, 13 to quetiapine, and 8 to aripiprazole. Age, comorbidities, and co-medications were rated as important features regardless of the prescribed drug. All PRFs were rated as always or frequently available and, if not, they were easy or partially easy to obtain. Age, comorbidities, and co-medications were always available in the medical records, whereas cognitive status (between 41.4 and 78.8%) or hepatic function (between 17.2 and 30.4%) presented a low-level of exhaustiveness. Conclusions: Even though a high number of PRFs were rated as clinically relevant, some of them were identified as frequently missing from medical records. This may suggest that medical records should be complemented with other sources (e.g., nursing and pharmacy records) to ensure a safe prescribing of APs.