Multimorbity and polypharmacy in elderly residents in the community
International Journal of Development Research
Multimorbity and polypharmacy in elderly residents in the community
Received 03rd November, 2019; Received in revised form 17th December, 2019; Accepted 26th January, 2020; Published online 27th February, 2020
Copyright © 2020, Paula Giovana Kleber et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Introduction: population aging is one of humanity's triumphs. Objective: To analyze sociodemographic characteristics, morbidities and medication use in the elderly of Vila Lângaro-RS Method: a population-based cross-sectional study. The population consisted of individuals aged 60 years or older registered in the Health Units of Vila Lângaro- RS. Results: of the 204 elderly participants 61% were female, the age ranged from 60 to 90 years, with an average of 71.18 (± 8.33) years. Of the elderly, 75.5% used the Unified Health System for health care. The most prevalent chronic diseases were: Hypertension with 70.6%, back problems with 57.4% and rheumatism / arthritis with 33.8% (n = 69). Medication use ranged from zero to 12 with an average of 3.5 and 56.8% use from 01 to 04 drugs per day. The most used drug classes were for the cardiovascular system with 34.9% (= 254), and for the central nervous system were mentioned by 24.6% participants, antidepressants are used by 21.9%. Polypharmacy was identified in 61.30% of respondents. Among the elderly with multimorbidity and polypharmacy were 88.5% (= 54). Conclusion: polypharmacy is more frequent in elderly with multimorbidity p <0.001, female p <0.025 and in the age group 71 to 80 years p <0.026.
