Vitamine D-suppletie bij ouderen: advies en praktijk

Objective

In 2008, the Health Council of the Netherlands published an advice on vitamin D supplementation for the elderly. Nevertheless, suspicion arose at the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport and the Netherlands Nutrition Centre that vitamin D supplementation in the elderly is still insufficient. We aimed to determine the extent to which general practitioners and elderly care physicians actually followed the advice of the Health Council.

Design

Questionnaire study.

Method

Brief questionnaires were sent to all elderly care physicians in the Netherlands. Some questions were also posed to general practitioners at a network meeting of the Academic Network of GP Practices of the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam.

Results

More than two-thirds of the respondents, both elderly care physicians and general practitioners, are familiar with the guidelines of the Health Council of the Netherlands on vitamin D supplementation in the elderly, but about half do not prescribe vitamin D when the guideline advises to do so. When supplementation is prescribed, about half of the elderly care physicians and a fifth of the general practitioners uses an insufficient dose.

Conclusion

The guidelines of the Health Council of the Netherlands on vitamin D supplementation in the elderly are not sufficiently followed by elderly care physicians and general practitioners. Awareness of and support for the vitamin D supplementation guidelines among health care providers is still limited.

Conflict of interest and financial support: disclosure forms provided by the authors are available along with the full text of this article at www.ntvg.nl, search for A5779; click on ‘Belangenverstrengeling’ (‘Conflict of interest’).