People who take multiple medications while suffering from an illness are at an increased risk of ending up in the hospital, a new study finds
Polypharmacy is a situation where a person takes multiple medicines for either one or multiple illnesses. Researchers from Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research conducted a recent study to look into how polypharmacy can affect a person's needs to be hospitalized.
The experts found that people who take multiple medicines while suffering from an illness are at a higher risk of being admitted to the hospital. However, people taking many medicines for multiple illnesses don't face any such risks, according to a press release.
"The commonly-held assumption that polypharmacy is always hazardous and represents poor care is misleading. Our work shows that we need more sophisticated approaches to assessing the appropriateness of each patient's set of medicines," said lead author Dr Rupert Payne who works at the Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research in a statement.
For the study, researchers examined health care data of 180,815 adults with long-term clinical conditions. They looked at the number of medicines they were taking for their illnesses and linked them to the chances of the person being admitted to a hospital in the following year.
They found that people who took ten or more medicines for one illness were at 'more than three-fold' higher risk of being hospitalized the following evening. Researchers also found that people who were taking 10 or more medicines while suffering from six or more diseases were 1.5 times at a higher risk of being hospitalized than those taking only up to 3 medicines for the same number of illnesses.
"This work is highly relevant to the development and assessment of prescribing skills in general practice where the majority of long-term clinical care is undertaken and where doctors often prescribe drugs for long periods of time. It is particularly important at times when doctors are caring for older patients and those with multiple medical conditions in whom multiple medications are often used," said Dr Payne.
Polyphramacy is becoming increasingly common in the United States because there are more elderly people. A rising number of people are also being diagnosed with multiple health issues, which is leading to the condition.
In some cases polyphramacy has also resulted in drug addiction, according to a study conducted by Linnaeus University.
