Why Is Polypharmacy A Concern In The Elderly?
Prescription of three or more of these types of medicines in older persons, a practice known as central nervous system (CNS)-active polypharmacy, may raise the risk of falls, overdoses, memory issues, and mortality, among other things.
What is polypharmacy and what is the importance of this in senior?
Polypharmacy becomes increasingly vital as individuals get older and become more weak. Seniors are more likely to suffer from health problems and to have a reduced ability to digest drugs. It is possible to experience higher side effects, drug interactions, and serious consequences if you take many drugs at the same time.
What is a common consequence of polypharmacy?
Polypharmacy has a variety of consequences, including adverse drug effects, drug-drug interactions, disease-drug interactions, food-drug interactions, nutraceutical-drug interactions, and medication cascade effects.
What factors contribute to polypharmacy in the elderly?
In addition to having a long-standing disease, chronic condition, or disability, and having at least one visit with a general practitioner in the previous two months, having self-reported depression over the previous year are among the factors most significantly related with excessive polypharmacy.
How does polypharmacy affect quality of life?
In both the older population and primary care-based cohorts, polypharmacy is related with poor health outcomes, including prescription non-adherence, adverse pharmacological effects, and a worse quality of life, among other things.
What is the purpose of polypharmacy?
Table 4
| Definition | References |
|---|---|
| Polypharmacy definition ranges from the use of a large number of medications, to the use of potentially inappropriate medications, medication underuse and medication duplication | |
| Potentially inappropriate medications |
Why does polypharmacy occur?
Polypharmacy can be induced by a multitude of circumstances, including the following: self-medicating without a thorough grasp of the consequences and responses; and being exposed to many medications. Patients are being administered several drugs by health experts who are completely unaware of the other people engaged in the situation.
How can an elderly prevent polypharmacy?
Avoiding Polypharmacy Issues in Older Adults: Some Prevention Strategies
- Work closely with patients and their families to ensure that a complete list of prescriptions is obtained.
- Reorganize the medication list in a patient’s electronic health record.
- Look for medications that are not suitable or wrong.
- When deprescribing drugs, proceed with caution.
Is polypharmacy appropriate or problematic?
Among other things, polypharmacy has the potential to be hazardous since it can raise the risk of drug interactions and adverse drug responses while also decreasing medication adherence and patient quality of life.
How does polypharmacy affect nursing?
Polypharmacy may be hazardous in that it can raise the chance of drug interactions and adverse drug responses, as well as affecting medication adherence and patient quality of life, among other things for patients.
How common is polypharmacy in the elderly?
Among community-dwelling elderly persons, it has a prevalence of 4 percent, but it has a prevalence of 96.5 percent among hospitalized patients. Aside from that, polypharmacy has been linked to an increased number of negative clinical consequences.
Why are patients on polypharmacy counseled?
The significance of counseling for both efficient drug adherence and best patient outcomes should be stressed; patients frequently need to be aware of and expect that their treatment will be more advanced as a result of polypharmacy.
What are the risk factors for polypharmacy?
Increased risk for excessive polypharmacy is associated with frailty, multimorbidity, obesity, and a deteriorated physical and mental health state, among other things.
What is appropriate and inappropriate polypharmacy?
A growing body of evidence suggests that there is a distinction between improper polypharmacy (the use of too many drugs) and appropriate polypharmacy (the use of several medicines), with the genuine objective of addressing various medical diseases in the same patient becoming more apparent.
How do you deal with polypharmacy?
How Can Physicians Prevent or Improve the Management of Polypharmacy?
- Be tenacious when it comes to medication reconciliation.
- Inquire with patients about whether or not they are being treated by other physicians or healthcare professionals.
- Verify that any drug being taken has a valid indication before taking it.
- Every visit or care transfer should be evaluated for deprescribing possibilities.