2021 Volume 13 Issue 2 Pages 154-161
The pharmacists have examined how to improve defecation control of the elderly patients who are more than 65 years old and are not able to control their defecation well in cooperation with the doctors and the staff members of the long term care bed since April, 2018. We made use of an algorithm for choosing a therapeutic agent for constipation of this hospital for the 13 elderly patients who are not able to control their defecation well. As a result, the order of choosing a therapeutic agent for constipation became easy to understand. Now we can suggest to the doctors when to change therapeutic agent for constipation and how much should they administer based on the number of days of defecation in a week and the evaluation of bristol stool form scale. And we combined linaclotide or elobixibat with Japanese herbal medicine, and administered it as the therapeutic agent for constipation. As a result, both the average number of days of defecation in a week and the center numerical value of bristol stool form scale in a week have improved more than administering magnesium oxide or irritative purgative.
The same result was obtained in the case of 11 patients who were administered for more than 24 weeks. We could show that it was useful for pharmacists to participate in defecation control of the elderly patients positively in cooperation with many kinds of professions in order to choose a suitable therapeutic agent for constipation and to improve defecation control.