Journal
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE
Volume 8, Issue 3, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/jcm8030305
Keywords
elderly; inappropriate prescribing; patient safety; polymedicated; primary care; risk factors STOPP; START
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Funding
- Andalusian Health Service [111222 SAS]
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To asses inappropriate prescribing and its predisposing factors in polymedicated patients over the age of 65 in primary health care. Design: cross-sectional study. Setting: Primary care centres in the Costa del Sol Health District and Northern Health Area of Malaga in southern Spain. Participants: Patients older than 65 years who use multiple medications. Data collection was conducted during 1 year in a population of 425 individuals who comprised a stratified randomized sample of the population of health care users in the study area. The data were collected by interview on a structured data collection form. Study variables. Dependent variable: Potentially inappropriate prescribing (PIP) (STOPP/START criteria). Predictor variables: Sociodemographic characteristics, clinical characteristics and medication use. A descriptive analysis of the variables was performed. Statistical inference was based on bivariate analysis (Student's t or Mann-Whitney U test and chi-squared test) and multivariate analysis was used to control for confounding factors. 73.6% of participants met one or more STOPP/START criteria. According to information about prescribed treatments, 48.5% of participants met at least one STOPP criterion and 43.30% of them met at least one START criterion. The largest percentage of inappropriate prescriptions was associated with cardiovascular treatments. More than three-quarters of the participants had one or more inappropriate prescriptions for medicines in primary care, according to STOPP/START criteria. In addition, PIP was directly related to the number of prescribed medications, gender and specific pathologies (diabetes).
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