Polypharmacy Among the Elderly

In the health care system in the United States, multidrug therapy for the elderly is getting more and more attention. Elderly people with co-morbidity and taking multiple drugs are at increased risk of developing a potentially harmful drug response. Elderly people taking their family medicine, herbs and supplements without consulting with a doctor are at risk of side effects related to multiple medicines. Patients with multiple prescription drugs or pharmacies, and those who continue taking medications discontinued by the doctor can create multiple medicines.

Pharmacopoeia will use several drugs simultaneously for various reasons. This is common among elderly people who need to take many different kinds of medication everyday. Drugs may be affected by pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics of other drugs. For example, the pharmacodynamic response is that if the drug X acts to lower the heart rate, the distribution of the drug Y may be affected by a decrease in blood pressure. The pharmacokinetic response will be the metabolism of the two drugs in the liver, so it must compete with metabolic enzymes.

One of the main reasons for declining compliance and consistency is multiple drugs. "Pharmacy" is derived from the word "poly" in Greek, "pharmacy" means medicine, but in fact a large amount of medicine is actually used and managed by the same person at the same time. As these drugs usually exceed clinical needs of patients, it can be thought that they can be avoided. However, some evidence suggests that most of these medications are properly prescribed for various health problems. Anyone with multiple diseases, whether adult or child, can be provided by many different drugs at the same time; however, the incidence of multiple drugs is common among elderly people in particular.

Drug-related adverse events are common in the elderly and are a common cause of ED visits. Elderly people suffer from severe and lethal drug adverse reactions due to multiple drug therapies, lack of monitoring, non-compliance, use of multiple medications, marketing drugs, dosage errors, drug metabolism changes and drug interactions Easier to receive. Risk factors for serious adverse drug reactions in the elderly include "older" patients, lean body mass, more than 6 chronic diseases, more than 9 drugs, more than 12 doses per day, and past harmful drug reactions History is included. The drugs with the most common problems include diuretics, NSAID, warfarin, digoxin, antidiabetic drugs, antiepileptic drugs, chemotherapeutic drugs, antibiotics, psychotropic drugs and so on. Validation may prove to be a very useful strategy while evaluating ED patients in elderly patients