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Abstract

Older people are worried about polypharmacy. There is an outpatient geriatric medicine clinic at an academic medical facility in northeast Ohio. A board-certified geriatric pharmacist works there and manages all of the medications for older persons under a joint practice agreement. This pharmacist's main job is to help people with drug-related problems (DRPs) and deprescribing, which is when people take too many drugs. The primary aim of this research was to delineate the drug-related problems (DRPs) detected by the pharmacist for older persons referred for polypharmacy. Secondary goals encompassed: delineating the DRPs addressed by the pharmacist, identifying the drugs deprescribed, assessing the frequency of supplementary outreach to other healthcare professionals or patient caregivers, and defining any extra pharmacist interventions. The goal of this research was to find out what the advantages of expanding geriatric pharmacy services would be. This research was a retrospective, non-interventional, single-center investigation. Patients were eligible if they were referred to the geriatric ambulatory clinic pharmacy services for polypharmacy and had an initial consultation with the pharmacist between September 1, 2021, and August 31, 2022. Descriptive statistics were used to look at baseline variables and study results. A total of 137 individuals were included in the research, with a significant 82% of the sample group exhibiting verified cognitive impairment. In the first 137 meetings with the pharmacist, 494 DRPs were found, and more than half of them were fixed at the first visit. There was at least one pharmacist intervention with each visit. The most prevalent drug-related problem (38.6%) was unnecessary drug treatment. The pharmacist deprescribed almost half of the 313 drugs that were found to be suitable for deprescribing on the first visit. Out of the 133 other pharmacist interventions, medication instruction was the most prevalent (52%). The findings of this research underscore the advantages of comprehensive drug management, particularly deprescribing, for an older adult demographic experiencing polypharmacy, most of whom exhibited cognitive impairment.

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Section
Review