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David C. Klonoff, MD; Robert L. Wiskocil, MD
University of California San Francisco

JAMA. 1995;273(6):456-457.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—Dr Willcox and colleagues¹ defined potentially inappropriate drugs for the community-dwelling elderly and then measured their frequency of use in such a population. We feel the authors made unsubstantiated claims in their title, methods, and conclusion. We found the title misleading and sensational. Whereas the body of the article repeatedly referred to "potentially" inappropriate prescribing practices, the word "potentially" was not used in the title. This omission could influence physicians to deprive patients of contraindicated drugs that are potentially inappropriate for some patients, but appropriate for other patients.

In the "Methods" section, the authors selected their contraindicated drugs based on the criteria of a prior article that evaluated inappropriate medication use in nursing home residents.² Willcox et al, however, studied community-dwelling elderly, not nursing home residents. Compared with the community-dwelling elderly, nursing home residents are generally more frail and have almost twice the prescription rate . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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