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Prevalence of and factors associated with polypharmacy among elderly persons resident in the community

2017; UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO DE JANEIRO; Volume: 20; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1590/1981-22562017020.160086

1981-2256

Natália Araújo de Almeida, Annelita Almeida Oliveira Reiners, Rosemeiry Capriata de Souza Azevedo, Ageo Mário Cândido da Silva, Joana Darc Chaves Cardoso, Luciane Cegati de Souza,

Healthcare Regulation

Abstract Objective: to verify the prevalence of and factors associated with polypharmacy among elderly residents of the city of Cuiabá, in the state of Mato Grosso. Method: a cross-sectional study of 573 people aged 60 and over was performed. Polypharmacy was defined as the use of five or more medications. To investigate the association between polypharmacy and sociodemographic variables, health and access to medication, the Mantel Haenszel chi square test was used in bivariate analysis and Poisson regression was used in multivariate analysis. The significance level adopted was 5%. Result: the prevalence of polypharmacy was 10.30%. Statistically significant associations were found between polypharmacy and living with others, describing suffering from circulatory, endocrine, nutritional and digestive tract diseases, and referring to financial difficulties for the purchase of medicines. Conclusion: some social and health condition factors play an important role in the use of multiple medications among the elderly.