Purpose:
To determine the prescribing patterns and occurrence of
potentially inappropriate medications (PIM) among
elderly outpatients visiting a tertiary hospital in
Nigeria.
Methods:
A retrospective study was carried out among elderly
subjects (age ≥ 60 years) who were issued prescriptions
in the outpatients department of Olabisi Onabanjo
University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH), Sagamu, Nigeria.
Data were obtained on demographics, prescribing
indicators and potentially inappropriate medications
using Beer’s criteria.
Results:
Of the 1000
prescriptions consecutively selected, 546 (54.6 %) were
for women and 454 were for men, giving a female to male
ratio of 1:0.83. The mean age of the subjects was 68.9 ±
7.3 years. Analgesics (756, 75.6 %) were the most
commonly prescribed medicines. Prescription of
antimalarials was low 127 (12.7 %).The total number of
medications prescribed was 3979 while the mean number of
medications per encounter was 3.9. The medications
prescribed by generic name were 1945 (48.9 %).
Encounters with antibiotic and injection prescriptions
were 203 (23 %) and 8 (0.8 %), respectively, while the
proportion of medications prescribed that were on
Nigeria’s essential medicines list or formulary was 95.4
%. Four hundred and fifty six (45.6 %) prescriptions had
one or more potentially inappropriate medicine.
Medicines with high and low severity for potentially
adverse events occurred in 82.7 % and 17.3 % of the
cases, respectively.
Conclusion:
Medication prescribing among the elderly is still
suboptimal. Appropriate interventions are required from
all stakeholders.
Keywords:
Elderly, Medications, Drug utilization, Potentially
inappropriate medications.
