A STUDY ON POLYPHARMACY IN SENIOR INDIAN POPULATION

Geriatrics is the branch of medicine which aims to promote health by preventing and treating diseases and disabilities in older adults.Elderly people particularly are subjected to have multiple medical disorders;some have self-prescribed many herbal medications and over-the-counter drugs; some adult physicians prescribe medications to their specialty without reviewing other medications used by the elder patient. This polypharmacy may result in many drug interactions and may cause some adverse drug reactions.. So the main objective of our study was to assess the polypharmacy and inappropriate medication usage in geriatric population. The prospective study was carried out in the departments of general medicine, cardiology and pulmonology of aprivate teaching hospital. The prescriptions were also categorized based on the appropriateness of the medications prescribed by the Beers criteria 2012 method. The analysis revealed us that 57.4% of the overall prescriptions was categorized as appropriate and 42.6% was categorized as inappropriate prescriptions.In India there are no standard guidelines about the use of drugs. The geriatric patients with a multiple diseases had consumed more drugs and have higher chance of polypharmacy and inappropriate drug usage. The purpose of this study was to assess the polypharmacy and related factors like how the lack of personalized care in geriatric patients will leads to irrational use of drugs and higher polypharmacy.