Prescription of potentially inappropriate medications in elderly: a systematic review

Polypharmacy in the elderly is of interest to health authorities because it predisposes to harmful drug interactions, side effects, and even death. The objective of this review was to identify potentially inappropriate drug prescriptions in older adults, as well as to assess the methodological quality of the available studies. A systematic review was carried out in the databases Pubmed, Dialnet, Scielo, Scient direct, Redalyc, Ovid. The search equation was Inadequate prescription AND medications AND older adults and their equivalents in English and Portuguese. In the initial search, 20,296 articles were found, and 42 articles were finally included in the review. It was found that 50% of the articles were cross-sectional design; the prevalence range of PIMPs from 19.8% to 98.2%, detected by Beer criteria, STOPP, START, PRISCUS, ACOVE, FROTA or MAI. The most commonly identified PIMPs were benzodiazepines and the associated factors were the number of medications, age, sex, and the presence of comorbidities. As a result, the observed prevalence of PIMPs in older adults is high and is related to the number of medications the patient takes.