Polypharmacy: volume or value, quantity or quality? The high quantity originates low quality. There is no adequate and valuable polypharmacy

Abstract

All patients, especially elderly patients, those with certain pathologies, those with multimorbidity, or those who live in institutions, are exposed to polypharmacy. The prevalence of polypharmacy is high (18-30%) and the prevalence of excessive polypharmacy (10+ drugs) is 12%. Polypharmacy affects between 40% and 50% of all older adults. The incidence rate of polypharmacy is 20% person-years, ranging from 17% in individuals aged 65–74 years to 33% in those aged ≥95 years. From this point of view, polypharmacy seems to be a concept of quantity or volume of prescriptions. It can lead to serious adverse events related to a wide variety of drug-drug interactions (DDIs) and adverse drug reactions (ADRs): the frequency of ADR is 6% when a patient takes two medications, 50% when he takes five and almost 100% when he takes eight or more medications. Of every 100 courses of drug treatment, there are 20 adverse drug ADRs, between 5 and 25 of clinically observable DDIs and between 15 and 50 potential DDIs, which arrive to 100 in geriatric patients. But on the other hand, low-quality pharmacological care reports are not uncommon. About 60% of patients may be exposed to at least one potentially inappropriate medication: benzodiazepines, psychotropics, proton pump inhibitors, analgesics (including opiates), laxatives, NSAIDs, antacids, etc. Adverse health outcomes related to inappropriate medications for the population, and especially the elderly, include falls, strokes, delirium and death. The quantity of drugs as a defining concept of polypharmacy implies poor quality. The more drugs that are prescribed to a patient, not only there are more possibilities of inappropriate prescriptions or of little value, but even suitable prescriptions tend to lose their indication, and from a certain level of quantity or volume of prescriptions, the increase IDDs and ADRs makes their value decrease in such prescriptions, and they begin to be inappropriate and give rise to poor quality. In other words, there is no adequate and valuable polypharmacy; the high quantity originates low quality.