Medication administration via feeding tube for older adults

OpenAlex İngilizce

Older adults are particularly vulnerable to medication administration errors, especially when malnutrition coexists with polypharmacy, highlighting the need for tailored healthcare approaches in this population. In this narrative review, it is aimed to emphasis the importance of medication administration via feeding tube in older adults and provide the list of appropriate administration of common medications in older adults. Feeding tubes used primarily for enteral nutrition and water administration, however when the patient needs medication administration feeding tubes considered as an administration route even though feeding tubes generally not design for medication administration. Therefore, this approach is prone to administration errors. Appropriate administration of medication is important in order to provide optimum pharmaceutical treatment for the older patients, prevent negative outcomes, complications and adverse medication events. However, appropriate administration of medication via feeding tube is challenging due to limited evidence and generally based on best practice. Pharmacists play an important role in providing comprehensive information regarding medication characteristics, the suitability of dosage forms, potential drug interactions, physicochemical stability, and appropriate administration techniques. The recommendations should be made for individual patients and medications with the contribution of multidisciplinary nutrition support team in order to maintain comprehensive evaluation of patient.