Abstract:

Introduction: Polypharmacy has become a common health problem as populations age. We aimed to determine the prevalence of chronic and cumulative polypharmacy in the geriatric population using primary healthcare services in Turkey. Materials and Methods: The electronic prescriptions ordered by family physicians across Turkey for geriatric patients (?65 years) in the Prescription Information System during 2018 were studied. Chronic polypharmacy criteria were proportion of patients who were given prescriptions containing ?5 drugs four or more times during a year. Cumulative polypharmacy was defined as proportion of patients who were prescribed ?5 drugs with different ATC4 codes in a month or in each quarter of the year. Results: Turkey"s total population is 82 million; 7,186,204 are aged 65 and over, constituting 8.8% of the total. Of this geriatric population, 6,104,798 (85.0%) had at least one prescription in 2018. Each geriatric patient had 6.4 prescriptions, with each prescription containing an average of 2.9 drugs with different fourth-level Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical codes. Each drug was prescribed in 2.7 boxes on average. Of these prescribed patients, 14.3% received prescriptions containing ?5 drugs four or more times during 2018. The percentage of patients who received at least one prescription per month containing ?5 drugs ranged between 16.4% and 20.7%. The most commonly prescribed drugs were acetylsalicylic acid, diclofenac, paracetamol, and pantoprazole. Conclusion: Polypharmacy is a critical health problem among geriatric population in Turkey as in other industrialized countries. Educating physicians as well as the public is essential to overcome polypharmacy.

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