Background Information: Polypharmacy is the use of 5 or more medications. This may affect the morbidity and mortality of the elderly patients, and it can also affect the quality of life of the patients who are with the comorbid conditions, for which they are using the multiple medications. Assessing the quality of life of the patient was done by using the WHOQOL-BRE questionnaire and Lawton IADL scale and the scoring was given according to the WHOQOL.
The comorbid conditions which we considered are hypertension, diabetes, cerebrovascular events (CVA), alcoholic liver disease (ALD), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pneumonia.
Methodology: A Prospective Observational study was conducted from November 2019 to April 2020 at Malla Reddy Hospital. A sample size of 315 patients were taken, all the necessary and relevant data were collected from the patient case notes, treatment charts, and laboratory reports. The questionnaires were filled by directly interviewing the patient. These data were recorded in a specially designed patient proforma/questionnaire’s. Questions were asked to the patients during the initial visit, and scoring was given accordingly, then they were counselled about their disease condition and treatment. During the final visit to the patients, scoring was given accordingly. This data was entered into excel sheets for statistical analysis.
Results: In the study, the rate of improvement in the scores of patients is clearly seen form initial visit to final visit. Before follow up 72% of patients were effected and 28% of patients were unaffected and after follow up 71% of patients were effected among them some of the patients were moved from poor quality of life to moderate quality of life , some form moderate to good quality of life and some from good to excellent quality of life and 29% of patients were remained un-effected. We found that the Patients with the Hypertension and Multimorbidity conditions were more prevalent in this study.Patients with the multimorbidity conditions are at higher risk when compared to other diseases and the study shows that they are having poor quality of life.
Conclusion: Initially most of the patients fall under the category of poor quality of life to moderate quality of life but after the treatment and patient counselling the quality of life of the patients was improved. From this, we can conclude that though polypharmacy has its disadvantages regarding the quality of life of elderly people but it is evident that quality of life in elderly can be improved through proper treatment and patient counselling.
Impact Factor
2022: 6.012
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