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Questions and Answers
What is the most commonly employed definition of polypharmacy?
According to the World Health Organization, what is the definition of polypharmacy?
What was the median number of prescription medications used among adults aged 65 and older in 1988?
What was the trend identified by Masnoon et al. regarding the proportion of people aged 65 and over taking at least five medications?
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What is the commonly used cutoff value for the number of medicines in clinical practice?
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What is considered a higher risk of prescribing errors, high-risk prescribing, and adverse drug events?
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What is a potential benefit of using a threshold of ten or more medications for identifying patients in need of medication reviews?
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What was the median number of prescription medications used among adults aged 65 and older in 2010?
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Study Notes
Polypharmacy Definition
- Polypharmacy is defined as the regular use of five or more medications, but a consensus on a definition is lacking.
- Numerical definitions are most commonly used, but polypharmacy can also be defined descriptively with an associated duration of therapy or healthcare setting.
Polypharmacy Trends
- Between 1988 and 2010, the median number of prescription medications used among adults aged 65 and older doubled from two to four.
- The proportion of people aged 65 and over taking at least five medications tripled between 1988 and 2010.
Numeric Thresholds
- A specific numeric threshold is easily identified in clinical practice, but often arbitrarily chosen.
- Common cutoff values include three or four medicines, but four or more drugs are now commonplace.
- A threshold of ten or more medications might be more appropriate to identify patients most in need of medication reviews.
Risks of Polypharmacy
- There is an increasing risk of prescribing errors, high-risk prescribing, and adverse drug events with the greater number of drugs prescribed.
- Ten or more drugs convey a higher risk than four to nine.
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Description
Quiz on the definition of polypharmacy, including numerical and descriptive approaches, and the role of healthcare settings.
