Evaluation of Inappropriate Prescribing in Patients Older than 65 Years in Primary Health Care.

To asses inappropriate prescribing and its predisposing factors in polymedicated patients over the age of 65 in primary health care.

DESIGN: cross-sectional study.

SETTING: Primary care centres in the Costa del Sol Health District and Northern Health Area of Malaga in southern Spain.

PARTICIPANTS: Patients older than 65 years who use multiple medications. Data collection was conducted during 1 year in a population of 425 individuals who comprised a stratified randomized sample of the population of health care users in the study area. The data were collected by interview on a structured data collection form.

STUDY VARIABLES: Dependent variable: Potentially inappropriate prescribing (PIP) (STOPP/START criteria). Predictor variables: Sociodemographic characteristics, clinical characteristics and medication use. A descriptive analysis of the variables was performed. Statistical inference was based on bivariate analysis (Student's t or Mann-Whitney U test and chi-squared test) and multivariate analysis was used to control for confounding factors. 73.6% of participants met one or more STOPP/START criteria. According to information about prescribed treatments, 48.5% of participants met at least one STOPP criterion and 43.30% of them met at least one START criterion. The largest percentage of inappropriate prescriptions was associated with cardiovascular treatments. More than three-quarters of the participants had one or more inappropriate prescriptions for medicines in primary care, according to STOPP/START criteria. In addition, PIP was directly related to the number of prescribed medications, gender and specific pathologies (diabetes).