Polypharmacy is the use of multiple drugs by a patient, although there is not a universally
accepted definition. According to several authors, the use of greater than or equal
to 5 drugs corresponds to polypharmacy, whereas others consider polypharmacy to be
the use of as few as 3 or more drugs, up to 10 or more drugs.
1
From another perspective, polypharmacy is defined as the use of unnecessary drugs
by a patient.
2
Independent of the specific definition, polypharmacy is a hot topic in medicine today,
particularly in older patients. Epidemiologic data demonstrate that polypharmacy is
widespread in the older population,
3
,
4
,
5
with increasing prevalence in the last decade.
6
Polypharmacy is caused by essentially 2 factors: (1) the increasing availability
of drugs to treat or prevent specific diseases (eg, hypertension, diabetes, heart
failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) implies that recommended therapies
often require multiple drugs; and (2) the frequent occurrence of multiple diseases
in the same person (multimorbidity).To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Publication history
Published online: August 17, 2015
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© 2016 AMDA – The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
