Prescription data and sample selection
This retrospective study focused on elderly patients who were
hospitalized from January 2017 to December 2017 in seventy-six hospitals
in China. Elderly patients were defined as patients over 65 years of age
before or during their hospitalization.
Prescription data were
obtained
from Hospital Prescription Analysis Cooperation Project. This project
was launched in 1997 by a renowned pharmacist in China named Dakui Li.
It allowed for the creation of a database that contains anonymized
prescription information from seventy-six hospitals located in six
cities in China: Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, and
Chengdu. The participating hospitals must follow the ‘recording
guidelines’ that require them to strictly control and monitor their own
prescription information and each participating hospital has open access
to the prescription information database. So far, there is considerable
amount of patient prescription information in the database, allowing us
to retrospectively evaluate the inappropriate pharmaceutical
treatments.17