ArticleEuropean journal of clinical pharmacology2015
Number of drugs in the medication list as an indicator of prescribing quality: a validation study of polypharmacy indicators in older hip fracture patients.
Article in European journal of clinical pharmacology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- Potentially inappropriate prescribing and falls-risk increasing drugs in people who have experienced a fall: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Age and ageing · 2025Pooled it
- Patterns of drug prescriptions in an orthogeriatric ward as compared to orthopaedic ward: results from the Trondheim Hip Fracture Trial-a randomised clinical trial.European journal of clinical pharmacology · 2017Trial
- Association between drug-specific indicators of prescribing quality and quality of drug treatment: a validation study.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2015Trial
- Use of potentially inappropriate medication and polypharmacy in older adults: a repeated cross-sectional study.BMC geriatrics · 2020Article
- Quality of prescribing in older people from a broad family physician perspective: a descriptive pilot study.BMJ open · 2019Article
- Clinician agreement and influence of medication-related characteristics on assessment of polypharmacy.Pharmacology research & perspectives · 2017Article
- Clinical relevance of the STOPP/START criteria in hip fracture patients.European journal of clinical pharmacology · 2017Article
- A practical approach to the pharmacological management of hypertension in older people.Therapeutic advances in drug safety · 2017Review
- Essential medicines for universal health coverage.Lancet (London, England) · 2017Review
- Long-term use of proton pump inhibitors and prevalence of disease- and drug-related reasons for gastroprotection-a cross-sectional population-based study.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2017Article
- Polypharmacy cut-points in older people with cancer: how many medications are too many?Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2016Article
- Appropriate Polypharmacy and Medicine Safety: When Many is not Too Many.Drug safety · 2016Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeIndicators based on the number of drugs in the medication list are sometimes used to reflect quality of drug treatment. This study aimed to evaluate the concurrent validity of such polypharmacy indicators, i.e., their ability to differentiate between appropriate and suboptimal drug treatment.
methodsIn 200 hip fracture patients (≥65 years of age), consecutively recruited to a randomized controlled study in Sahlgrenska University Hospital in 2009, quality of drug treatment at study entry was assessed according to a gold standard as well as to indicators based on the number of drugs in the medication list. As gold standard, two specialist physicians independently assessed and then agreed on the quality for each patient, after initial screening with Screening Tool of Older Persons' potentially inappropriate Prescriptions (STOPP) and Screening Tool to Alert to Right Treatment (START). Suboptimal drug treatment was defined as ≥1 STOPP/START outcomes assessed as clinically relevant at the individual level.
resultsA total of 141 (71 %) patients had suboptimal drug treatment according to the gold standard. The corresponding figures according to the indicators ≥5 and ≥10 drugs were 149 (75) and 49 (25 %), respectively. The sensitivity for the indicators ≥5 and ≥10 drugs to detect suboptimal drug treatment was 0.86 (95 % confidence interval: 0.80; 0.92) and 0.32 (0.25; 0.40), respectively. The specificity was 0.53 (0.41; 0.65) and 0.93 (0.82; 0.97).
conclusionsThe findings suggest that no polypharmacy indicator could serve as a general indicator of prescribing quality; cut-offs for such indicators need to be chosen according to purpose.
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