Effectiveness of a Joint General Practitioner-Pharmacist Intervention on Benzodiazepine Deprescribing in the Elderly (BESTOPH-MG)

Nantes University Hospital (NUH)

Status

Not yet enrolling

Conditions

Deprescribing

Benzodiazepine Dependence

Health Plan Implementation

Elderly

Anxiety

Primary Care

Treatments

Behavioral: GP - pharmacist collaboration and pharmacist motivational interviewing

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT05765656

RC21_0357

Details and patient eligibility

About

Benzodiazepines or related drug (BZDR) are consumed for hypnotic or anxiolytic purposes in most cases. The consequences of BZDR are multiple with an increased risk of daytime sedation, balance disorders leading to falls and fractures, cognitive disorders, road accidents and dementia. Given their comorbidities, physiological changes, and multiple medications, the elderly are more at risk of suffering from BZDR adverse events.

Interprofessional collaboration has shown efficacy in improving prescribing appropriateness and may affect patients outcomes positively. Morever, motivational interviews (MI) may reduce the extent of substance abuse compared to no intervention.

Full description

According to a 2017 report from the French National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM), 13.4% of the French population used a benzodiazepine or related drug (BZDR) at least once in 2015. These drugs are consumed for hypnotic or anxiolytic purposes in most cases. As per the recommendations, BZDR should not be prescribed for more than 28 days when for hypnotic use and for 8 to 12 weeks, including withdrawal, when for anxiolytic purpose. Indeed, these drugs have shown a real, but mediocre, short-term efficacy on anxiety and sleep disorders. Moreover, their long-term effectiveness is almost nil. However, the literature shows that nearly one patient out of six taking a BZDR is a long-term user and that the proportion of patients for whom the indication is questionable can reach 2/3. The consequences of BZDR are multiple with an increased risk of daytime sedation, balance disorders leading to falls and fractures, cognitive disorders, road accidents and dementia. Also, given their comorbidities, physiological changes, and multiple medications, the elderly are more at risk of suffering from BZDR adverse events, like falls, driving accidents, dementia or even death. The majority of patients are unaware of these potential risks and continue to use these medications over the long term. They overestimate the benefits of BZDR and underestimate their harmful effects. The consequences are substantial, both from a health and financial perspective.

At the national level, numerous actions have been taken by the health authorities to reduce the use of BZDR: information for health professionals, pictograms on drug boxes, recommendations by health authorities, incentive measures by the Health Insurance services, or else health surveillance and regulatory measures to control prescribing. However, despite these numerous initiatives, the consumption of BZDR remains too high, even emphasized by the pandemic, and their deprescribing is struggling to be implemented in real life. Literature showed that many levers can facilitate the implementation of actions for the proper use of drugs. Interprofessional collaboration has shown efficacy in improving prescribing appropriateness and may affect patients outcomes positively, as shown by many recent systematic reviews and meta-analysis. General practitioners (GPs) who do not feel fully capable of implementing actions to deprescribe BZDR if they have to rely solely on guidelines, and because of the lack of time to re-evaluate these treatments. Yet, current international deprescribing studies remain based on actions only directed at the prescriber. Collaboration between two primary care professionals therefore appears to be a solution for implementing a medical decision to stop treatment. In addition, GPs are faced with a population which is very often reluctant to stop for fear of a return of anxiety or insomnia. In this context, another lever usable to achieve the implementation of deprescribing is the use of techniques that allow the patient to accept the physician's intervention. As such, motivational interviews (MI) may reduce the extent of substance abuse compared to no intervention. Developing and promoting training for healthcare professionals in MI may be a simple and pragmatic implementation strategy to reduce BZDR use.

Enrollment

400 estimated patients

Sex

All

Ages

65+ years old

Volunteers

No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

outpatients aged 65 and over
followed by the general practitioner and the pharmacist of the GP-PO pair
having a prescription for an anxiolytic or hypnotic BZDR prescribed at least 4 times in the past year
the last prescription being less than 3 months old
having been dispensed monthly during the last 3 months
affiliated to a social security scheme
and having given consent to participate in the research.

Exclusion criteria

patients living in an institution
participating in a clinical trial
with epilepsy
active depression
uncontrolled mental disorders
unable to participate in an interview or answer a questionnaire (demented, non-French speaking, illiterate, deaf, ...)
under guardianship
with a dystonic syndrome
and patients who are not sufficiently autonomous to carry out the steps inherent in the study