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INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC HEALTH CONFERENCE IN TIRANA, ALBANIAPotentially inappropriate prescribing among olderpeopleDriton Shabani 1,2 , Zejdush Tahiri 2 , Besnik Jucja 21Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine, University of Pristine, Kosovo;2University of Medicine, Tirana, Albania.Older people often experience multiple diseases and,therefore, this is inevitably associated with multipledrug use. This phenomenon, being referred to aspolypharmacy, is related to the concurrent use of atleast five different medications. It has beenconvincingly demonstrated that multiple usage ofmedications may lead to inappropriate prescribingand a decrease in the therapeutic response. Accordingto the vast international literature on this matter,potentially inappropriate prescribing in older peopleare considered those drugs which do not haveevidence-based indications for use, those which beara high risk for side effects in older people comparedwith younger adults, or those drugs which have notbeen shown to be cost-effective in clinical settings,but particularly in epidemiological (populationbased)studies.From this perspective, inappropriate prescribing inolder people is a common and serious healthcareproblem in most of the countries worldwide, butespeciallyso in transitional countries of the WesternBalkans including Kosovo and Albania where thereare no clear and strict regulations related toprescriptions of medications. Therefore, similar toother countries, the polypharmacy phenomenon issupposedly linked to an increased risk of adversedrug reactions and inappropriate prescribing inKosovo and Albania too.Although inappropriate prescribing is a vastphenomenon in many countries, this condition isalmost fully preventable and, thus, there have beendeveloped specific screening instruments forinappropriate prescriptions including Beers Criteriaand the Inappropriate Prescribing in the Elderly Tool(IPET).In the international literature, Beers Criteria consistof the most frequently reported screening instrumentfor inappropriate prescribing notwithstandingsome major criticism which has been evoked mostlydue to the fact that several drugs are rarely prescribedcurrently, there exists a lack of structure in thepresentation of the criteria and omission of severalimportant and common inappropriate prescribinginstances.These internationally validated instruments arecurrently being cross-culturally adapted andsubsequently will be administered to a nationwiderepresentative sample of older people in Kosovo.Keywords: Beers Criteria, inappropriateprescribing, InappropriatePrescribingin theElderlyTool (IPET), older people,polypharmacy.ALBANIAN MEDICAL JOURNAL SUPPLEMENT95