Assessment of Drug-Related Problems in Geriatric Patients of Tertiary Care Hospital: A Prospective Observational Study

Background

Geriatric populations have at high probability of getting drug-related issues due to age-related pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic changes. Ageing populations are more prone to have DRPs due to age, drug characteristics, polypharmacy, and multiple comorbidities. The study aimed to assess the DRP in geriatric patients attended a tertiary care teaching hospital.

Materials and Methods

The study was a prospective observational study which was carried out for a duration of 6 months involving inpatients of Vivekananda General Hospital. PCNE classification V 9.1 was used to assess the drug-related problems.

Results

In this study, 210 geriatric patients were analysed, among which 161 were males and 49 were females. The mean age of study participants was 69.5 (±5.0) years. Among overall population, 193 (91.9%) subjects were reported with comorbidities. The most common chronic disease was hypertension (43.4%), and the least was found to be Hypothyroidism (1.6%). Comorbidities were assessed based on charlson comorbidity index, where the mean score of comorbidities was 3.86 with 54% survival rate in 10 years. The subjects were analysed for DRPs using PCNE classification V9.1, among which 132 prescriptions contain 299 DRPs. Drug-drug interactions were the highest observed DRPs (107). Other DRPs were found within the Problem domain (23.07%), Cause domain (43.47%), planned interventions (16.72%), Intervention acceptance (11.70%) followed by Outcome domain (5.01%) of PCNE classification.

Conclusion

Our study highlights that importance of pharmaceutical care among the geriatric patients. Special emphasized care must be given to elderly population to avoid DRPs due to presence of comorbidities, polypharmacy and illiteracy.