Answers to Previous Questions:
I looked for other health conditions that were indicators of polypharmacy. A major one that I found was depression. Patients taking antidepressants are much more likely to have polypharmacy. This leads to an interesting subject; how might the presence of an affective (psychological) disorder contribute to polypharmacy. There are a lot of different affective disorders and they probably shouldn't be categorized all as the same type of health condition, but there may be some common themes. This topic seems interesting, but is a bit of a tangent off of my main research topic so I'll hold off for now on investigating it more thoroughly.
New Information:
I found a new article that has an interesting solution to the problem of inappropriate prescribing as a result of polypharmacy. The researchers tested the effect of having a clinical pharmacist (someone with a pharmaceutical degree) involved in the prescribing process for older patients with polypharmacy. Primary care physicians often do not have time to review and adjust the drug regimens of older patients, thus inappropriate prescribing goes unaddressed. In this study, a clinical pharmacist reviewed the drug regimens of older patients with polypharmacy and made recommendations to the physician with changes to inappropriate prescriptions. After one year they found a 23% decrease in inappropriate prescriptions vs. a control group.
Questions from this Information:
How much is this implemented in different health care centers? The article had been cited by over 200 other sources so I assume it has been pretty widely implemented.
How many health care centers have clinical pharmacists available?
Keywords:
Clinical pharmacists, inappropriate prescriptions, affective disorders, indicators of polypharmacy
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