Total ACB Score:
High Risk

Your patient has scored ≥3 and is therefore at a higher risk of confusion, falls and death.

Please review their medications and, if possible, discuss this with the patient and/or relatives/carers. Please consider if any of these medications could be switched to a lower-risk alternative.

For help choosing medicines to reduce anticholinergic burden, click here

  • Drugs with possible anticholinergic burden score 1.
  • Drugs with definite anticholinergic burden score 2 or 3.
  • If you cannot find your medication listed in the calculator, you can assume it scores 0.

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    Webpage updated on 03 July 2024

    Many of the medications that we commonly prescribe have anticholinergic properties. In patients over 65 years of age these can cause adverse events, such as confusion, dizziness and falls. These have been shown to increase patient mortality.

    You can use this calculator to work out the Anticholinergic Burden for your patients; a score of 3+ is associated with an increased cognitive impairment and mortality.

    Whilst there are multiple different scoring systems, the German Anticholinergic Burden score7 and the Anticholinergic Cognitive Burden Scale4 have been demonstrated to show most validity and reliability8. Therefore, we have used a combination of these 2 scales when creating the ACB calculator. When discrepancies arose, we opted to include the higher value in the interest of safety.

    Find more information on Anticholinergic Burden or help choosing medicines to reduce anticholinergic burden