study of prescribing unsuitable drugs and polypharmacy in the elderly admitted to the Vasei Hospital of Sabzevar, 2017

The risk of prescribing potentially inappropriate drugs for the elderly require serious attention. The aim of this study was to determine the status of administration of inappropriate and multidrug medications in the elderly admitted to Vasei Hospital in Sabzevar. This descriptive-analytical study was carried out on 186 elderly over 60 years old who admitted to the General and Educational Hospital of Sabzevar, 2017, which were selected through convenience sampling . Data were collected by using a questionnaire including demographic information and Beers Criteria . Data were analyzed using SPSS 21 and descriptive statistics, one way ANOVA and independent t-test. The mean age of the elderly was 71 ± 9 years. Approximately 66% of patients received more than 5 simultaneous medications and, on average, for each elderly, 6.2% of the drug was prescribed. The use of inappropriate drugs among the elderly was 31%, most of which were related to benzodiazepines and antipsychotics. In terms of prevalence of drug use, medications associated with gastrointestinal and psychiatric disorders were more frequent. There was no significant relationship between the simultaneous consumption of a large number of drugs with demographic characteristics including sex, type of ward and age (P <0.05). The main results of this study showed that in addition to raising the average amount of consumed medication for any elderly patient outside the standard range, drug treatments contain inappropriate drug prescriptions, which generally show a poor signal from the drug use situation in the elderly. Therefore, these problems require that research into preventive strategies and effective interventions be designed and implemented to reduce these problems.