Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

Drug-related mortality and morbidity concern mainly older people because of frequent poly-pathology and polytherapy among them. The objective of this study was to estimate the scale of taking potentially inappropriate prescription drugs (PIPDs) by home-dwelling, elderly patients in the Polish environment and to evaluate the influence of age/gender of the patient and the specialty/place of practice of the practitioner and their choice of them.

METHODS:

Data were collected in pharmacies in Cracow and Gorlice and their vicinity. We analyzed PIPDs as revised by Beers et al. in 1997 and 2002.

RESULTS:

We analyzed data on 5086 prescriptions (10340 drugs). We observed buying the 19 types of PIPDs. The most common PIPDs were doxazosin (23.73% out of all PIPDs), hydroxyzine (16%), doxepin (9.33%), ticlopidine (9.06%), amiodarone (7.47%) and chlorazepate (7.2%). Other drugs were bought rarely. The prevalence of inappropriate choice of drugs was 3.6% (95% CI: 0.037-0.04, SD: 0.187). General practitioners and family medicine specialists prescribed PIPDs much more seldom than others. We did not observe exceeding of maximum daily doses of analyzed PIPDs.

CONCLUSION:

The analysis confirms the hypothesis that older patients, especially with polytherapy including psychotropic drugs, should be embraced by careful care of interdisciplinary medical teams.