Polypharmacy & Pharmacists; Multicenter Prospective Study Demonstrates Benefits of Interventions

What is it about?

This prospective study shows: 1) Polypharmacy and the impact of hospital pharmacists on polypharmacy in Japanese hospitals: The average number of regular medications used by patients involved in drug reduction was 8.2, and the average number of medications reduced was 1.7. 2) Of the 123 adverse drug reactions, 44.7% improved after medication reduction interventions by pharmacists. 3) Patients using opioids tended to take more medications (8.9), and these patients were able to reduce the number of medications taken (1.9). ポリファーマシーと薬剤師；多施設前向き研究で介入の有益性を実証

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Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This was the first multicenter prospective observational study conducted in Japan to demonstrate how hospital pharmacists contribute to eliminating polypharmacy among inpatients. Of the 1,415 patients involved in the study, the pharmacists recommended discontinuing or reducing the dosage for 347 patients (24.5%). A total of 391 patients received recommendations from pharmacists’ to reduce IMs use, of which 368 (94.1%) were accepted. A total of 523 drugs were discontinued following the pharmacist’s recommendations. Pharmacist intervention improved hypnotic sedation, delirium, and hypotension.

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