Why The Use Of 5 Or More Medications Known As Polypharmacy, Is More Harmful Than Helpful – By Chinenye Ukadinma

Chinenye Ukadinma is currently the superintendent pharmacist of Elpha pharmacy Magodo Lagos, a subsidiary of New Heights Pharmaceutical Lagos.

She has a first degree in industrial physics, before she went further to study pharmacy.

She shares an inspirational medical advise on the topic Polypharmacy and there is alot to learn from this article.

Read her post below:

Polypharmacy is most commonly defined as the use of five or more medications daily by an individual. It involves the use of multiple concurrent medications or simultaneous long term use of different drugs by the same person.

There are several risk factors that can lead to polypharmacy;
*When a patient has multiple medical conditions that are managed by many physicians.

*Systems-level risk factors which include poorly updated medical records, automatic refill services, and prescribing to meet disease-specific quality metrics.

It is estimated that over 50% of adults (geriatrics) are exposed to polypharmacy.There can be appropriate or inappropriate use of polypharmacy.

Polypharmacy is not necessarily ill-advised, but in many instances can lead to negative outcomes or poor treatment effectiveness, often being more harmful than helpful or presenting too much risk for too little benefit.

To reduce the burden of polypharmacy, Healthcare professionals have to actively implement;

*Monitoring patients’ active medication lists

*Deprescribing any unnecessary medications that are recommended to reduce pill burden

*Reviewing to validate whether all of the medications are still necessary.

Dangers of Polypharmacy include;

*Increased adverse drug reactions, 

*Drug interactions, 

*Prescribing cascade(the process whereby the side effects of drugs are misdiagnosed as symptoms of another problem, resulting in further prescriptions and further side effects and unanticipated drug interactions)

*Higher costs

*Decreased quality of life

*Decreased mobility.

Email: elora.akpotosevbe@yahoo.com