Background:
Benzodiazepines are often used on a long term basis in the elderly to treat various psychological disorders including sleep disorders, some neurological disorders and anxiety. This is despite the risk of dependence, cognitive impairment, and falls and fractures. Guidelines, campaigns and prescribing restrictions have been used to raise awareness of potentially inappropriate use, however long term use of benzodiazepine and related compounds is currently increasing in Australia and worldwide. The aim is to explore interventions aimed at improving the prescribing and use of benzodiazepines in the last 20 years.
Methods:
The literature was searched and the interventions solely focusing on increasing appropriate prescribing and reducing long term use of benzodiazepines worldwide were retrieved.
Results:
Thirty-two articles met the inclusion criteria. Three major intervention approaches were identified; education, audit and feedback, and alerts
Conclusions:
Studies which used a multi-faceted approach had the largest and most sustained reductions in benzodiazepines use. It appears that support groups for patients, non-voluntary recruitment of GPs, and oral delivery of alerts or feedback may all improve the outcomes of interventions. The choice of outcome measures, delivery style of educational messages, and requests by GPs to stop benzodiazepines, either in a letter or face to face, showed no differences on the success rates of the intervention.