Prevalence, Drug Related Problems and Outcomes of Polypharmacy Treatment among Patients: Literature Review

Abstract

Polypharmacy is a condition of an exceeded prescription over practice guideline or using multiple medicines for treatment. The use of polypharmacy trends to be continuously increased due to patients’ pathological conditions and comorbidity. The common side effects polypharmacy are adverse drug reac-tion, drug interaction, low compliance, poor adherence and irrational use of drugs. Undesirable clinical outcomes of polypharmacy treatment include death, cardiovascular diseases, dementia, fainting, falling and decreased glycemic control. The objective of this study was to conduct literature review on polyphar-macy using internet searching for relevant reports published since 1992. The study outcomes suggested that medical doctors and health related personnel should be careful when prescribing polypharmacy in order to avoid drug related problems during treatment particularly among ageing people, who are at higher risk of drug related complications. It was recoomended that future studies should aim at assessing the prevalence, associated factors, and the outcomes of polypharmacy treatment, particularly among patients with non-communicable diseases including diabetes mellitus, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, cere-brovascular diseases in order to ensure successful treatment and increase quality of life of the patients.