Myrl Jeffcoat myrlj@jps.net

15 mars, 2005 20:27

Purge that medicine cabinet! Mixing outdated prescription drugs is a recipe for disaster

By Loretta Burkhart

Times-News writer

TWIN FALLS -- Gladys Smith, 66, learned the hard way that while there's no warning label on her medicine-cabinet door, what she keeps inside can be trouble.  "I live on pain medication," said Smith, but had she taken a more serious look at what she stored in her medicine cabinet, it could have saved her a major scare.

After her family physician moved away a few years ago, Smith looked to another doctor to help her with pain management.  The discomfort she deals with "on a daily basis" became more acute after she underwent surgery to have silicone breast implants removed.  While new drugs were prescribed for her pain, she didn't discard the pain medication that she had been using for lymphedema.

One morning, she added one of the older pills to her regular morning mixture of prescription drugs. A few dizzying minutes later, she realized that what she had done could have caused her serious harm.  Mixing prescription drugs -- or accidentally using medications that are outdated -- is a growing concern, especially among the elderly.

MEDICINE CABINET

Gladys Smith of Twin Falls takes 16 different pills each day and has more than 30 different prescription drugs in the house between her and her husband Don. Mixing prescription drugs and using outdated prescriptions can have harmful effects, so experts say you should clean out your medicine cabinet at least once a year.    

But according to local pharmacists, there are a number of safeguards.  "I always tell people to read the labels carefully -- and be (extremely) careful with pain medication, or anything the affects the central nervous system," said Kurt Hefner, a pharmacist and owner of Kurt's Pharmacy in the Lynwood Shopping Mall.  When medications are outdated, his advice is emphatic.  "Throw it away," Hefner said.  And the best way to do that is to flush those pills down the toilet.  "And when people say 'I can't,' I say, 'Yes, you can.'"  Hefner warns against discarding medications in a garbage can because of the danger to pets.

According to the St. Paul, Minn., Pioneer Press, just as people make appointments for yearly physicals, they also need to get an annual checkup on their medicine cabinets.  The newspaper included opinions from medical experts who were asked for suggestions on what items to stock, where to store them -- and when to pitch them.

Purge your medicine cabinet once a year, they advised, and find another place to store prescription drugs.  The heat and humidity of the bathroom can increase the rate the medications degrade, Dr. Thomas Lacker, a professor in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Minnesota, told the Pioneer Press.  Instead, seek out a cool, dry place, such as a kitchen cabinet, "out of the reach of children," he said.

With all over-the-counter medications, read the labels and check with a pharmacist when picking drugs for infants, children or pregnant women.  And be aware of possible interactions with other medications.  At the Twin Falls Senior Citizens Center, a program to safeguard the use of medications is already in place.

Through the Area IV Office on Aging, a medical management program provides seniors with the opportunity to have their prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications checked at all 18 senior centers in the Magic and Wood River valleys, according to Bruce Fox, manager of the Vista Senior Prescription Project.  "We call (the prescription drug project) brown-bagging," said Jackie Whiting, the Twin Falls center administrator.

Vista blends its program with a yearly health fair held at the center. For that, seniors are asked to bring in all of their medications in brown bags, and a pharmacist checks the dates on the bottles.  "And he also checks to see that one drug isn't counteracting with the other," Whiting said.  And she can see that the program is working.  Dangerous mixes are thrown into the garbage, "and (the pharmacist) disposes of it himself," she said.

But it's a never-ending problem.  "We have people call us on a weekly basis saying they don't remember what a certain medication is for," said Dave Nelson, pharmacist at Sav-Mor Drug.  While getting rid of outdated medications is important, information provided by Vista warns about another concern: Ordering off the Internet.

As the World Wide Web has grown, so has the market for cheaper prescription drugs from over-the-border outlets in Canada and Mexico.   Although drugs prices on the Internet may be less, there's usually nobody available to offer advice about prescription medications.  Before ordering by mail or on the Internet, Vista urges seniors to explore all of the issues and understand all the potential problems.

And before ordering online, make certain the Web site you're buying from secure  The pitfalls could prove to be hard to swallow.  To name a few: Quality assurance, counterfeit potential, medications substituted, unsupervised order labels, language issues and a possibility of contaminated products.  And is there a list of medications that are not a good mix?  Where the variables with medications are concerned, that type of list could be misleading -- and prove to be endless, Hefner said.