Study links polypharmacy in older adults to emergency hospital admissions
A study published in the journal Age and Ageing has shown that inappropriate polypharmacy – the excessive or unnecessary use of multiple medications – significantly contributes to emergency hospital admissions amongst adults aged 65 and over.
The study was conducted by the Department of Life Sciences at the University of Bath, who say:
“The study used a large UK dataset to develop three machine learning models capable of predicting 30-day emergency hospitalisation in older adults with around 75% accuracy.
A key variable in these models was the Drug Burden Index (DBI), which measures the cumulative effect of medications with sedative and anticholinergic properties. Anticholinergics are a class of drug used to treat various chronic conditions such as dementia, depression, urinary incontinence and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
The cumulative effects of these drugs consistently emerged as one of the strongest predictors of a person being at risk of emergency hospitalisation. Other predictors included impaired mobility, a history of fractures and falls, smoking and excessive alcohol consumption.”
The researchers now hope to use their findings to create a digital tool, such as an app, to proactively identify older adults at risk of polypharmacy to help avoid hospital admission.
You can read the study here: https://academic.oup.com/ageing/article/54/6/afaf156/8158005