Prescription drug use among adults aged 40-79 in the United States and Canada
Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and
the Canadian Health Measures Survey
- Nearly 7 in 10 adults aged 40–79 used at least 1 prescription drug in the past 30 days in the United States (69.0%) and Canada (65.5%),
and around 1 in 5 used at least 5 prescription drugs (22.4% in the United States and 18.8% in Canada).
● Among adults aged 40–59, the most commonly used drug types in the United States were antidepressants, lipid-lowering drugs, and ACE inhibitors; in Canada, they were analgesics, antidepressants, and lipidlowering drugs.
● Among adults aged 60–79, the most commonly used drug types in the United States were lipid-lowering drugs, antidiabetic agents, and beta
blockers; in Canada, they were lipid-lowering drugs, analgesics, and proton pump inhibitors.
Updated International Classification of Diseases:
This report summarizes the findings from the testing process and describes how the findings were used to update the proposed case definition. In the updated ICD–10–CM surveillance case definition, injury hospitalizations are identified as hospitalization records with a principal diagnosis of select ICD–10–CM S, T, O, and M codes. The codes must indicate an initial encounter for active treatment of an injury or be missing encounter type information. The selection criteria exclude hospitalization records with an injury as a secondary or subsequent diagnosis (not the principal diagnosis)
or that have an external cause-of-injury code but do not have an injury code as the principal diagnosis. The updated ICD–10–CM surveillance case definition for injury hospitalizations provides standardized selection criteria for monitoring differences in hospitalization rates among populations and over time.