2019 Volume 42 Issue 1 Pages 9-14
Introduction: Polypharmacy is the practice of prescribing many medications. In this study, we assessed the current status of polypharmacy among elderly patients and cases of inappropriate prescription (IP) at the Department of General Internal Medicine (GIM) at Sendai Medical Center.
Methods: We retrospectively surveyed 136 inpatients who were over 65 years old between April 2015 and March 2016 at the Department of GIM.
We examined the patient's current medications and used the STOPP (screening tool of older person's potentially inappropriate prescriptions) criteria version 2 to analyze potentially inappropriate medication (PIM) cases.
Results: Of 136 study patients, 77 (56.6%) patients were taking more than 6 medications. For patients over 75 years old, the average number of current medications increased.
In addition, 33 cases of PIM were confirmed and the number increased in proportion to the number of current medications. Furthermore, there were 4 cases of adverse reactions in which the STOPP criteria version 2 were not applied.
Conclusion: In this study, we confirmed polypharmacy in the examined patients.
In order to solve the problem of polypharmacy, all medical staff must cooperate and review the prescriptions of individual patients.
General physicians should assume the leading role in the distribution and improvement of polypharmacy and IP.
