Americans increasingly come into contact with powerful medicines that possess great potential both to help and to harm. Used correctly, prescribed medications and over-the-counter products can be the single best means of staying healthy, getting better, and controlling chronic health problems.

The right medication, in the right amount, administered in the right way to the right patient can produce a "medical miracle." As a cost-effective alternative to many surgeries or to loss of health and independence, pharmacologic agents are a genuine social good and are particularly useful given the challenge of delivering health care to an increasingly older population in the U.S. For older patients with multiple diseases, properly managed pharmacotherapy can help them live longer and live better.

However, medications also have the potential to cause serious harm on a wide scale. Recent studies point to the severity of the problem. Although these studies examined medication use in Americans of all ages, given the special vulnerabilities of older people to medication-related problems, it is reasonable to expect that older people carry a disproportionate burden of adverse outcomes due to medication therapy.

Even when medications are taken as intended, some adverse reactions occur that are severe enough to cause disability and even death. Although a study reported in the April 1998 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, did not focus specifically on older people, it estimated that 106,000 fatal adverse drug reactions occur annually. If these adverse drug reactions were classified as a distinct disease, it would rank as the fifth leading cause of death in the U.S. Click here for more details.