Polifarmácia e medicamentos potencialmente inapropriados em idosas de um grupo de convivência

Abstract

This dissertation aimed to investigate polypharmacy and inappropriate medication use in elderly women participating in the Elo-Creati Program, Passo Fundo. To this end, a cross-sectional study was carried out, with a convenience sample, with a longitudinal design of the Reference and Care for the Elderly Center (Creati). All women aged 60 or over, enrolled in one or more workshops, from August 2014 to August 2015, who agreed to participate in the study by signing the Free and Informed Consent Term, were included. In the analysis of the data obtained by applying a questionnaire, absolute and relative frequencies were performed for the qualitative variables and measures of central tendency and dispersion for the quantitative variables were calculated; to verify the association between the variables, bivariate analysis was used, from which variables with significance p <0.20 were selected to include in the multivariate analysis. To present the results, this dissertation was structured in two scientific productions. Scientific Production I, aimed to evaluate the use of polypharmacy in elderly women participating in the Elo-Creati Program. The polypharmacy outcome was defined as the use of five or more drugs. The results showed that, in relation to the age criterion, elderly women over 80 years old were the ones who presented more polypharmacy, 39.1%. When comorbidities were analyzed, 47.9% of the participants had polypharmacy and had Diabetes Mellitus, and 31.8% of the participants had polypharmacy and had hypertension as a comorbidity. The results obtained make it possible to affirm that the panorama of polypharmacy by elderly women, in the municipality of the study, does not differ from that found in the literature that investigated it in other regions of Brazil, revealing a certain national trend. Scientific Production II evaluated drug interactions and potentially inappropriate medications in elderly women participating in the Elo-Creati Program, Passo Fundo. The potentially inappropriate drug outcome was assessed according to the Beers Criteria 2015. It was possible to observe that, among all the drugs evaluated, 16 drug interactions were found, 54.4% of which were of moderate intensity. The prevalent drug interactions were between Puran T4 versus Simvastatin and Puran T4 versus Omeprazole. Regarding the evaluation of potentially inappropriate drugs, according to the Beers Criteria 2015, only 2.4% were found. In the end, it is concluded that health professionals should have more knowledge about the use of potentially inappropriate medications by the elderly, since the consequences of this use can have serious consequences for this age group.