Geriatrics / Pharmacology
Anticholinergic Burden Calculator
Add the patient's medicines to calculate a cumulative Anticholinergic Cognitive Burden (ACB) score, identify high-contributing medicines, document symptoms, and generate a medication-review note.
1. Patient information
2. Add medicines
The built-in list focuses on commonly encountered medicines with ACB scores of 1–3. Unlisted medicines can be entered manually below.
Add an unlisted medicine manually
4. Current symptoms and vulnerabilities
ACB result
Add the patient's medicines to calculate cumulative burden.
3. Medication list
No medicines added.
Score guide
Common interpretation: total 0 = none identified; 1–2 = some/moderate burden; 3 or more = clinically significant burden warranting medication review. Thresholds support review rather than automatic discontinuation.
Suggested review workflow
- Confirm prescription, OTC, PRN, and recently discontinued medicines.
- Identify score-3 medicines and duplicated anticholinergic indications.
- Confirm indication, benefit, dose, duration, and symptom timing.
- Consider lower-burden alternatives, dose reduction, tapering, or discontinuation when appropriate.
- Avoid abrupt withdrawal when tapering is required.
- Recalculate after changes and monitor cognition, falls, bowel/bladder function, vision, and dry mouth.
Chart-ready medication review
Educational clinical decision support. This independent implementation is not affiliated with ACBcalc.com. The medication database should be periodically reviewed and locally validated before organizational deployment.