A prospective, cross-sectional study on Prescribing Pattern of Drugs and the incidence of potentially inappropriate medications in Geriatrics Population at a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital in Western India

Abstract

Background: Polypharmacy and inappropriate prescriptions are the most highlighted health issues among geriatric population, as they have multiple comorbidities. The objective of this study was to assess prescriptions using the World Health Organization (WHO) core indicators and Beers Criteria to discover polypharmacy and inappropriate prescriptions.Methods: This was a prospective, cross-sectional study of geriatric patients (65 years and above) who were attending the medicine outpatients clinic of a tertiary care teaching hospital hospital from May to December, 2016. World Health Organization (WHO) indicators and updated Beers Criteria were used to assess the drug utilization pattern and the prevalence of potentially inappropriatemedications (PIMs), respectively.Results: The prescriptions of 250 geriatrics patients with a distribution of 57.6% male and 42.4% female were assessed for this study. The total numbers of drugs recorded from the prescriptions were 1635 drugs, with an average of 6.54 drugs per person. According tothe Beers Criteria, it was found that nearly 23.05% of the total prescribed drugs were potentially inappropriate.Conclusion: Polypharmacy and use of inappropriate medicines presents a health risk to the geriatric population. Causes could include healthcare practitioner shortage, lack of awareness of PIMs, not understanding drug interaction, and the need for multiple drugs. Prescriber training and retraining is needed.