Study on Pharmaceutical Care in Geriatrics of a Rural Tertiary Care Hospital

The physiological alterations and lifestyle modifications in elderly lead to more health issues/diseases. This leads to Polypharmacy (more than 5 drugs use) and non-compliance to their medications. Hence, the objective of our study was to assess the impact of pharmacist-provided pharmaceutical care service in geriatric patients. This was a prospective, observational and interventional study was conducted in geriatrics over a period of 10 months. Medication Adherence Rating Scale (MARS) method was used to check adherence status of the patient. The obtained results were subjected to descriptive statistical analysis. Among 151 enrolled patients, 73.51% were in the age group of 60-70 years and 3.974% were in the age group of 80-90, among 73.51%, female were more (81.6%), when compared to male (65.3%). The mean age of the total study population was 68.08 +/- 6.908. A total of 97 (64.2%) patients had a past medical history. The majority of the elderly patients were diagnosed as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary diseases (COPD) 10(10.6%), Hypertension (HTN) with Diabetes Mellitus (DM) 9 (4.64%), Fever 5 (3.3%), Anemia 4(2.6%), Acute Gastroenteritis 3 (2%). The polypharmacy (5 drugs) was observed in 89.04% patients. 1.98% patients had untreated indications which are part of the types of medication-related problems (MRP). Among 151 enrolled patients, 64.2% of the patients were considered to be Non adherent. This clearly suggests that the need for continuous pharmaceutical care services in geriatrics was essential and geriatric pharmacist experts are essential/need for the rural society.