Inappropriate drug use rates of geriatric patients attending to a university hospital cardiology policlinic.

Abstract

The interest in risks related to inappropriate drug use (IDU) and polypharmacy among the elderly has increased in recent years. We aimed to determine the frequency of IDU and multiple drug use in elderly patients in the cardiology outpatient clinic. : In this prospective, cross-sectional study, a total of 513 patients aged 65 years and above who were admitted to the Cardiology Policlinic between December 2017 and January 2018 were included. To determine the prevalence of IDU, we investigated the suitability of the drugs used by the patients (according to the criteria of Beers 2015 and Screening Tool of Older People's Prescriptions [STOPP] version 2), the number of violated criteria in both the guidelines and which criterion was violated by the inappropriate drugs. : The 513 patients (mean age: 73.18 ± 5.99) in this study included females (n = 235; 45.8%) and males (n = 278; 54.2%). A total of 2,910 drugs were used by the 513 patients (mean per patient: 5.67 ± 2.51); 52.8% of the patients were using more than five drugs. The Beers criteria revealed that 304 IDUs were detected among the drugs and showed that 38.6% (n = 198) of the patients had IDU. According to the STOPP criteria, 366 IDUs were identified among the drugs used, and 45.6% (n = 234) of the patients had IDU. IDU frequencies of the elderly patients are similar to the world literature in our study. As the number of chronic illnesses the patients had increases, the frequency of IDU increases according to Beers and STOPP criteria in our study.