{"id":19,"date":"2017-07-28T02:19:38","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T02:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/?p=19"},"modified":"2017-07-28T02:20:55","modified_gmt":"2017-07-28T02:20:55","slug":"perspectives-on-the-management-of-polypharmacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2017\/07\/28\/perspectives-on-the-management-of-polypharmacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Perspectives on the management of polypharmacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A paper published in the journal\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/bmcfampract.biomedcentral.com\/articles\/10.1186\/s12875-017-0642-0\">BMC Family Practice<\/a>\u00a0discusses the management of polypharmacy (the concurrent use of multiple medications by one individual). Because of ageing populations, the growth in the number of people with multi-morbidity and greater compliance with disease-specific guidelines, polypharmacy is becoming increasingly common.<\/p>\n<p>Although the correct drug treatment in patients with complex medical problems can improve clinical outcomes, quality of life and life expectancy, polypharmacy is also associated with an increased risk of adverse drug events, some severe enough to result in hospital admission and even death. Hence, having systems in place to ensure that medications are started only when there is a suitable indication, ensuring patients are fully aware of the benefits and complications that may arise from their treatment, and reviewing patients regularly to ensure their medication regime remains appropriate, are essential.<\/p>\n<p>The development and rapid uptake of electronic patient records \u2013 particularly in primary care settings where the majority of prescribing takes place \u2013 makes monitoring of patients more straightforward than in the past; and allows identification of sub-groups of patients at particularly high risk of adverse drug events and complications. It also facilitates \u2018deprescribing\u2019 the process by which medications are reviewed and stopped if not clinically beneficial.<\/p>\n<p>In recent years, we have also seen the development of smartphone \u2018apps\u2019 to improve communication between patients and healthcare professionals, improve people\u2019s understanding of their conditions and their treatment, and maintain a record of changes made to patient\u2019s medication. In the longer term, developments such as the introduction of artificial intelligence and clinical decision support systems also have the potential to improve prescribing and minimise the risks from polypharmacy. Finally, there is considerable scope to improve the quality of prescribing and reduce risks from poly-pharmacy using non-medical groups such as pharmacists, specialist nurses and physician assistants.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1186\/s12875-017-0642-0\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1186\/s12875-017-0642-0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A paper published in the journal\u00a0BMC Family Practice\u00a0discusses the management of polypharmacy (the concurrent use of multiple medications by one individual). Because of ageing populations, the growth in the number of people with multi-morbidity and greater compliance with disease-specific guidelines, polypharmacy is becoming increasingly common. Although the correct drug treatment in patients with complex medical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[404],"tags":[251300,251547,250573,250954,20750],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","tag-comorbidity","tag-general-medicine","tag-polypharmacy","tag-prescribing","tag-primary-care"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Perspectives on the management of polypharmacy - Medical Centre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2017\/07\/28\/perspectives-on-the-management-of-polypharmacy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Perspectives on the management of polypharmacy - Medical Centre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A paper published in the journal\u00a0BMC Family Practice\u00a0discusses the management of polypharmacy (the concurrent use of multiple medications by one individual). Because of ageing populations, the growth in the number of people with multi-morbidity and greater compliance with disease-specific guidelines, polypharmacy is becoming increasingly common. 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