1,800 OAPS KILLED BY DEMENTIA SEDATIVES; Drugs help just 1 in 5 people.Byline: EMILY COOK CHEMICAL cosh drugs are being wrongly used to treat 150,000 dementia sufferers with about 1,800 dying as a result every year. Campaigners yesterday welcomed the findings of the Government review and said the scandal of overprescribing the anti-psychotic sedatives had to end. Neil Hunt, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society, said: "These drugs should only be a last resort. Scandalous MATTER, SCANDALOUS, equity pleading. A false and malicious statement of facts, not relevant to the cause. But nothing which is positively relevant, however harsh or gross the charge may be, can be considered scandalous. 4 Bouv. Inst. n. 4163. 2. over prescription of anti-psychotics must end. This review is a welcome recognition of the scale of the issue." The drugs are licensed to tackle schizophrenia but are used to contain aggression and agitation agitation /ag·i·ta·tion/ (aj?i-ta´shun) excessive, purposeless cognitive and motor activity or restlessness, usually associated with a state of tension or anxiety. Called also psychomotor a. in dementia sufferers. Prof Sube Banerjee, who led the probe, estimated only about 36,000 of 180,000 patients on them get any benefit and said their use could be cut by a third. Rebecca Wood of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, added: "We must urgently develop safe treatments for dementia." Care services minister Phil Hope Philip Ian "Phil" Hope BEd (Exon) (born April 19, 1955) is a British politician as is the Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament for Corby. He is currently a Parliamentary Secretary in the Cabinet Office. vowed to increase non-drug therapies. He said: "We're not calling for a ban, but we do want to see a significant reduction in use." CAPTION(S): VICTIMS Dementia patients get sedatives |
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