Advancing Deprescribing in Clinical Practice Guidelines

Background and Overview:

Disease-focused clinical practice guidelines commonly make recommendations about when and how to prescribe medications but have historically provided much less guidance about when and how to stop (deprescribe) medications. This is important because medications that may have been indicated at one point in a person’s illness and life trajectory may no longer be helpful or cause more harm than good yet are often continued to the person’s detriment. In addition, following multiple disease-specific guidelines for older adults with multimorbidity can become cumulatively impractical and harmful. Greater attention to deprescribing in clinical practice guidelines may help to resolve this imbalance and lead to better patient care and outcomes.  

The goal of this symposium is to support the ability of guideline developers and other stakeholders to thoughtfully incorporate recommendations for deprescribing into disease-focused practice guidelines. To this end, this symposium will convene people involved in guideline development from a variety of clinical specialties, experts in deprescribing and evidence synthesis, and other stakeholders. In this small and highly interactive meeting, we will review and discuss evidence and perspectives on a variety of topics related to incorporating deprescribing recommendations into practice guidelines, and move toward consensus on best practices for incorporating deprescribing guidance into these materials. Dissemination and future scholarship and action on these principles will be supported through publication of symposium proceedings, presentations at professional society meetings, and the formation of relationships to catalyze areas of needed research and foster mutual learning and implementation efforts.