Course Description

This content area addresses geriatric pharmacology, and focuses on specific groups of medications that are administered commonly to older adults. Issues relevant to geriatric pharmacology will be discussed first, with particular emphasis on why drug effects and adverse reactions are often different in older patients compared to younger individuals. This content area concludes with a survey of cancer chemotherapy.

Upon successful completion of this content area, the therapist will:

• Describe the pattern of geriatric prescribing, and explain why older adults often take more medications that a younger patient cohort.
• Define polypharmacy, rationalize why this phenomenon is more common in older adults, and describe the adverse consequences that can result from polypharmacy in an older population.
• Explain why pharmacokinetic variables such as drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion often change during aging, and how these changes can affect drug responses of patients undergoing physical rehabilitation.
• Appreciate why older adults are more prone to adverse drug reactions, and what steps clinicians can take to minimize these reactions in older patients.
• List the primary drug categories used to treat cancer, and explain how each category attempts to limit abnormal cell division in cancerous conditions.
• Appreciate why patients undergoing cancer chemotherapy often experience severe side effects from these medications
• Describe innovative drug strategies that have been used to treat cancer with fewer side effects, and hypothesize how future drug strategies might provide safer and more effective cancer treatments.