Polypharmacy Management in Elderly Patients with Multimorbidity

Abstract

Active implementation of patient-centered polypharmacy management for older adults with multimorbidity can help to identify and correct the medication errors that patients may have, avoid the occurrence of potential medication errors, reduce and control the development of drug-related diseases, improve the clinical treatment effect, and delay the disease progression, thereby facilitating the achievement of targets for disease control, and improvement of quality of life of patients. In the light of problems of polypharmacy in Chinese elderly patients with multimorbidity, we summarized relevant interventions including strengthening top-level design of management, building multidisciplinary teams, innovating medication management technologies, and meeting patients'needs of drug information, providing a reference for medication management of these patients. We found that problems of polypharmacy in Chinese elderly patients are serious, and actively exploring multiple approaches to polypharmacy management based on medication features of these patients may be a key breakthrough for addressing the problems.

Keywords

• elderly|multimorbidity|medication management|analysis and comment