Polypharmacy Health, Medicine, Nursing Essay Research (Essay Sample)

Polypharmacy
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Elderly patients are more likely to exhibit neuropsychiatric reactions to drugs due to age-related changes in their brain functionality, pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics (Meulenbroek, Toussi, van Marum & Rikkert, 2013). In this case, the patient’s dementia is likely being caused by the complications from her multiple morbidities and the accompanying multiple medication. She suffers from both chronic cardiac failure (CCF) and osteoarthritis and is under six different medications; raising her exposure to potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) and odd medicine ratios.
Polypharmacy is the use of multiple medicines on a patient to treat multiple diseases. It is most common among the elderly given that they have a higher tendency to suffer from multiple morbidities (Masnoon, Shakib, Kalische-Ellett & Caughey, 2017). Dementia associated with polypharmacy is gradually becoming a significant area of concern (Park, Park, Song, Sohn & Kwon, 2017). Polypharmacy hampers effective therapeutic management of a patient by causing conflicting drug interactions, adverse reaction to various medicines and even mortality (Masnoon, Shakib, Kalische-Ellett & Caughey, 2017). With lengthened durations of polypharmacy, the patient is likely to suffer from adverse drug reactions and have their health severely deteriorate (Park, Park, Song, Sohn & Kwon, 2017).
Lau et al. (2010) studied the relationship between dementia and comorbidities and ascertained that elderly persons taking a series of more than 4 sets of drugs exhibited a higher likelihood of getting PIM administration and tended to suffer from dementia with increasing medication. More studies have shown that extended glucocorticoid use from the treatment of various diseases may cause drug neurotoxicity in patients making them suffer from severe cognitive impairment (Parsons, 2017; Wolkowitz et al., 2004).