POLYPHARMACY AMONG OLDER PATIENTS ATTENDING SELECTED HOSPITAL OF BHARATPUR METROPOLITAN CITY, NEPAL

Background: Elderly are associated with physiological and pathological changes-places individuals at a higher risk of multimorbidity and treatment-related complications. Today, polypharmacy is the major challenge among the elderly population we aimed to determine the prevalence of polypharmacy and its associated factors among elderly patients. Methods: The study was conducted to investigate the Prevalence of Polypharmacy and its associated factor among the elderly patients. Visiting Out Patient Department in Bharatpur hospital, Bharatpur, Nepal and College of Medical Sciences, Bharatpur, Nepal, between April to July 2019. The face-to-face interview adopted in 330 elderly patients with random sampling technique SPSS version 20.0 was used for Data analysis. Results: A total of 330 patients met the inclusion criteria and majority of them were female (50.90%) and (53.33%) was in the age group 65-70had illiterate (71.50%) and married (68.50%), belongs to Hindu(91.0%). The prevalence of polypharmacy was found to be 34.5 % while it is associated with number of comorbidities (p=0.000) and it was not associated with age, gender, level of education (p=0.811), (p=0.068) and (p=0.132) respectively. Conclusion: The study concluded that elderly people with illiteracy leads to polypharmacy. Elderly people who have multiple diseases have higher incidence of polypharmacy.