Avaliação da prescrição de medicamentos potencialmente inapropriados para idosos que internaram em um hospital do sul do Brasil.

Abstract

Medicines known as potentially inappropriate medications (PIM) have an unfavorable benefitto-risk ratio for older people utilization and they were already associated to loss of quality of life, increased healthcare resource utilization and costs and with mortality in this age range. Hospitalized elderly inpatients, specially, are at particular risk for inappropriate drug prescription. As it is, PIM use is an important problem related to elderly healthcare and an important efficacy, safety and quality indicator for this population’s medical prescription. The current study aims to assess PIM prescription prevalence in an elderly population hospitalized in south Brazil and to identify some possible associations with hospitalization variables. 300 medical records of elderly hospitalized in Hospital Santa Cruz, city of Santa Cruz do Sul – state of Rio Grande do Sul -, in 2017 were investigated. MIP prevalence were evaluated according to 2015 Beers Criteria. Possible predictors for PIM prescription investigated were age, sex, civil status, health plan, ICD-10, length of stay, hospital result and polypharmacy prescription. Absolut and percentage frequencies were assessed for all variables and qui-square tested association between those predictors and MPI. As result, a great part of this sample received up to five PIM during the hospitalization, though this prevalence increases significally when we include prescriptions made but not administered to the patient. There was significant association between PIM prescription and length of stay, hospital result, ICD-10 and polypharmacy (p < 0.05). As it is, the current study shows a high PIM prevalence and pharmacotherapy revisions are relevant and necessary to reach safer and more effective prescriptions to elderly hospitalized inpatients.