The Medicament And The Polymedicated Elderly In Portugal
Instituto Politécnico de Coimbra, ESTESC-Coimbra Health School
Pharmacy Department, Coimbra, Portugal
Abstract
Introduction: More and more people around the world live longer. Today 125 million people are 80 years old or
older, and for the first time in history, most people can expect to live to be sixty years old. By 2050, the world’s
population aged 60 years old and over should total 2 billion, up from 900 million in 2015.
With advancing age, the existence of multiple pathologies and consequently polymedication is common.
Pharmacotherapy is the main therapeutic resource in curing and controlling pathologies. Given this, polymedication
is an area to be highlighted and should be viewed as one of the main problems arising from the prescription and
non-prescription of medicine to the elderly population.
Aim: This study aims are to determine levels of adherence to therapy; evaluate the main factors influencing
adherence and describe polymedication in the institutionalized elderly in ADIC, checking the existence of
polypathologies.
Material and Methods: All data necessary for the study was obtained through a questionnaire validated for the
Portuguese language to evaluate the adherence to therapy.
Results / Discussion: The population of this study is mostly made up of women (68.57%) with an average age of
around 82 years old. It is an aging population in which 71.43% of individuals are polymedicated with an average
of 7 medicines consumed daily. Despite this, adherence values to therapy were found to be in the order of 85%. Also
the compliance with the doctor’s recommendations on how to take the medication does not seem to be a problem
as 94.1% of individuals reported not having any difficulty in this task.
Conclusion: It is imperative to create multidisciplinary teams of health professionals working together with
patients and their families, able to respond to the needs of therapeutic reconciliation, to ensure the adherence and
therapeutic adequacy to therapeutic schemes, which may become complex and extensive.
