Polypharmacy
DEPolypharmazie
Polypharmacy usually means taking five or more medications at once. (Thresholds vary; some use 4 or more, and 'hyperpolypharmacy' is usually 10 or more.) It is not the same as appropriate polypharmacy. That is when each drug is genuinely evidence-based for your conditions. It gets much more common with age and multiple diseases. Over 40% of adults 65 and up in many wealthy countries take five or more drugs. The risks add up. They include drug-drug interactions and stacking side effects. They include 'prescribing cascades', where one drug's side effect gets treated with another drug. And they include worse adherence, falls, cognitive problems, and hospitalization. The counter-move is 'deprescribing'. That is the structured reduction of drugs that are not pulling their weight. It is a growing field in geriatric and longevity medicine. The evidence is solid for trimming specific classes in older adults, like proton pump inhibitors, benzodiazepines, and anticholinergics.
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