A prospective study on prescribing pattern of drugs in geriatric patients in the department of medicine in a tertiary care center

Abstract

Background: India stands at 3 position with large elderly population in the world. Elderly population has special problems related to health, social support, and economic security. Comorbidities in elderly people are frequent, which require use of multiple medications which increases the number of inappropriate medications noncompliance, economic burden, adverse drug reactions (ADRs), and drug interactions. The overall incidence of ADR is two to three times higher due to physiological and pharmacological variations. Currently used screening tools for inappropriate prescription in old age are: Beers criteria and inappropriate prescribing in the elderly tool (IPET). Methods: A prospective observational study of elderly patients of either sex admitted in the medicine ward, conducted from May 2019-November 2019. A total of 102 prescriptions were collected and analysed. Data was analysed using Microsoft excel. Results: In this study most of the patients (67 out of 102) were in the age group 65-70 years with male population (73%) dominance. Most of the patient were admitted due to cardiovascular (35.84%) and respiratory system (14.15%) disorder. Anti-diabetics (17.64%) followed by anti-microbials (14.24%) were the most commonly prescribed medicines in this study. Our study revealed poly pharmacy in geriatric patients with an average number of drugs per prescription being 6.07. According to BEER’s criteria 3.47% of total drugs prescribed were inappropriate Conclusions: In this study most of the patients had co morbid conditions, cardiovascular disease and diabetes being the common cause led to polypharmacy. A high number of potential prescription errors were found.