The evaluation of the status of polypharmacy in individuals over 65 years in Ula district of Muğla

The proportion of the elderly population is increasing in our country and in the world, and chronic diseases and health problems specific to old age are becoming more important. At the stage where chronic diseases and health problems in old age are tried to be solved with the help of drugs, we encounter the problem of polypharmacy, which we can define as the use of multiple drugs. Polypharmacy, which has been shown to cause a wide range of adverse conditions such as drug-drug interaction, drug-disease interaction, drug incompatibility, adverse side effects, unnecessary health expenditures, falls, fractures due to falls, cognitive imparment, increase in hospitalizations, is an important society health problem. In our study, face-to-face interviews were provided by making home visits with 269 people aged over 65 and residing in the Ula town of Muğla. In the interviews, scale tests in the questionnaire form were applied. With the interviews, it was aimed to evaluate the chronic diseases, drug use, polypharmacy, alcohol and cigarette use, and falling status in elderly individuals living in Ula District. vii As a result of the study, we found that polypharmacy was more common in people with 3 or more chronic diseases.