How does polypharmacy affect the elderly?

How does polypharmacy affect the elderly?

In older adults, prescribing three or more of these types of drugs, called central nervous system (CNS)-active polypharmacy, may increase the risk of falls, overdoses, memory problems, and death.

How do you know you have polypharmacy?

Clinically, the criteria utilized for identifying polypharmacy involve the following:

1. Taking medications that have no apparent indication.
2. Using therapeutic equivalents to treat the same illness.
3. Concurrent usage of interacting medications.
4. Using an inappropriate dosage.

How do you manage polypharmacy?

A Pharmacist’s Tips on Polypharmacy Management

1. Visually inspect patient’s medications at every visit.
2. Perform medication reconciliation.
3. Identify drug interactions, fall risk medications, swallowing risk medications.
4. Ask about over-the-counter medications and herbal supplements.

What are the side effects of polypharmacy?

Patients and caregivers can look for common symptoms of adverse reactions and drug interactions resulting from polypharmacy. The common signs are a loss of appetite, diarrhea, tiredness or reduced alertness, confusion and hallucinations, falls, weakness and dizziness, skin rashes, depression, anxiety, and excitability.

How can an elderly prevent polypharmacy?

Tips for Avoiding Polypharmacy Issues in Older Adults

1. Work diligently with patients and families to secure an accurate list of medications.
2. Reorganize the medication list in a patient’s EHR.
3. Look for inappropriate and incorrect prescriptions.
4. Use caution when deprescribing medications.

What are 5 methods used to try and reduce polypharmacy?

Identifying drug-related problems, prioritizing them, using tapering approaches, monitoring for adverse drug-withdrawal events, reducing pill burden and appropriately using compliance strategies are demonstrated throughout these cases.

What is the best example of polypharmacy?

An example of a polypharmacy definition which recognised the use of appropriate and inappropriate medications is “polypharmacy ranges from the use of a large number of medications, to the use of potentially inappropriate medications, medication underuse and duplication” and “potentially inappropriate medications” [114] …

How can you reduce the risk of polypharmacy?

What causes polypharmacy?

Polypharmacy can be caused by a variety of factors including: Self-medicating without an accurate understanding of effects and reactions. Patients being prescribed multiple medications by health professionals who are not aware of other parties involved.

What is the synonyms of word prescription?

In this page you can discover 34 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for prescription, like: medicine, formula, prescript, mixture, direction, prescriptions, law, dispense, decree, edict and institute.

Why are prescriptions called Rx?

Rx is commonly known to most as the symbol for a medical prescription. However, the symbol is derived from the Latin word recipe or “recipere,”which means to take. The word was later abbreviated and became Rx as we know it today.