Abstract

A commonly reported definition of polypharmacy is the numerical definition of 5 or more medications daily, and definitions have ranged from 2 or more to 11 or more medications. In this case report, an extreme case of polypharmacy is presented, highlighted by the inordinate number of drugs used over time throughout the patient’s care. A 48-year-old African American female with multiple comorbidities experienced a serious adverse drug event (ADE) prompting reporting to MedWatch, the US Food and Drug Administration’s adverse drug event reporting system. The patient’s concomitant medications included 146 drug entities, across 82 therapeutic drug categories. It is apparent that the greatest influence on the occurrence of polypharmacy was the presence of multiple comorbidities, and treatment centered around addressing each morbidity with drug therapy. This case illustrates the insidious nature of polypharmacy and raises questions as to the appropriate progression and limits on the use of multiple medications.

Description

© 2022 Veronin. This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/). Full published version of the article can also be viewed on the Publisher's site here: https://www.dovepress.com/an-atypical-case-of-extreme-polypharmacy-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-DHPS

Publisher

Dove Medical Press Limited

Date of publication

3-10-2022

Language

english

Persistent identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10950/3945

Document Type

Article

Publisher Citation

Veronin MA. An Atypical Case of Extreme Polypharmacy. Drug Healthc Patient Saf. 2022;14:19-26 https://doi.org/10.2147/DHPS.S332954

Download

Share

COinS