Examining the compliance of medications received by elderly patients with Beer’s 2019 criteria

Abstract

Introduction: It is important to receive multiple drugs and drug side effects and improper use of drugs in an arbitrary manner in the elderly. Purpose: to check the compliance of the medications received by elderly patients with the Beer’s 2019 criteria.Methodology: Patients over 65 years referred to the emergency department within last 9 months were included in. The information on the drugs used by the patient at the time of referral was matched with the information included in Beer’s 2019 criteria. The number of inappropriate drugs and the type of inappropriate drugs were recorded. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 216.Findings: 55.5% were men. 43.9% were taking inappropriate medication and 3.4% were taking more than 5 inappropriate medications. 94% had an underlying disease. The mean ± standard deviation of age, weight, number of drugs used and visits to the emergency room in the year were equal to 74.1 ± 7.6 years, 78.6 ± 12.5 kg, 5.2 ± 3.1 drugs and 1.3 ± 1.7 times respectively. The common category of drugs used was cardiovascular (0.24%). The mean ± standard deviation of the number of inappropriate drugs was 1.9 ± 1.2 drugs. The use of inappropriate medication increased the chance of going to the emergency room by 46% in the past year (P=0.003), adjusting the confounding factors, the use of inappropriate medication increases the chance of going to the emergency room by 33% in a year. There was a positive and significant relationship between the number of visits to the emergency room in the past year (P=0.007, correlation coefficient=0.083).Conclusion: The results of this study showed a positive and significant effect of inappropriate drug use on the chance of going to the emergency room and the number of visits to the emergency room.