Polypharmacy and potential inappropriateness of pharmaco-logical treatment among community-dwelling elderly patients.

In this study, we describe the phenomenon of polypharmacy and the frequency of the potential inappropriate medication use, according to the criteria of Beers (Beers, M.H. (1997): Explicit criteria for determining potentially inappropriate medication use by the elderly. An update. Arch. Intern. Med. 157. 1531-153 C) among elderly subjects in Poland. The study involved 680 individuals (including 438 women and 242 men) aged 65 years and more (mean age: 72.6+/-6.5 years) residing in Poznań (P) and 320 (216 women and 104 men (mean age: 72.5+/-6.0 years) residing in Glogow (G). The average number of all drugs taken by the analyzed patients was more than 6 (P: 6.9+/-3.2, range: 0-17 drugs, and in G: 6.6+/-3.1, 0-16), of prescribed drugs, more than 5 (P: 5.3+/-2.8, range: 0-15 drugs, G: 5.2+/-2.8, ranging 0-16) and of non-prescribed drugs, more than 1 (P: 1.6+/-1.5, range: 0-11 drugs, G: 1.4+/-1.4, range 0-8). As far as the frequency of the potential inappropriate medication use is concerned, almost one third of all persons, (285 persons, 28.2% of all), in P: 195 persons (28.6% of the subjects), in G: 90 (27.2%) used at least one of the potential inappropriate medications. Polypharmacy and the potential inappropriateness of pharmacological treatment are common in community-dwelling elderly subjects in Poland. There is a great need to improve the quality of medication use in this group of patients. In order to do it we have elaborated and nowadays we introduce the project of pharmaceutical care in Poland.