MEDICATION ADHERENCE AND POLYPHARMACY RISKS IN ELDERLY CARDIAC PATIENTS

Abstract

Two of the most critical aspects, which influence the health of elderly individuals with heart issues, are medication adherence and polypharmacy, particularly in individuals with a large number of health issues and a complex treatment regimen.  This paper analysed compliance behaviours, drug burden and polypharmacy related risk indicators in a group of elderly individuals undergoing chronic cardiac treatment.  The results of nine detailed analytical tables and twelve advanced visual models suggested that adherence behaviours exhibited a great heterogeneity and approximately 40-45% of the subjects experienced moderate adherence and more than 30% were high-risk non-adherents.  The majority of the patients were taking more than single medicine, with the range of 5 to 10 meds most widely used.  Age has shown positive relationship with number of medications; however the growing drug load was a consistent relationship with the increasing adverse drug interaction risk scores.  Additional visualisations that included scatter and hybrid size underscored the concentration of the high-risk groups in relation to older age groups (≥75 years), as these age groups are cumulative based on age, comorbidity, and complexity of the drugs. Frequency study also indicated that individuals that were given over seven medications in one day missed drug doses most. This is an indication that behaviour is directly influenced by the complexity of the regimen.  Hybrid risk-adherence models showed a strong negative correlation between the percent of adherence and the index of polypharmacy severity.  The overall findings indicate that polypharmacy does not only increase the risk of drug interactions but also intensifies the ability of older individuals with heart issues to adhere to their medications making them more susceptible within the clinical environment.  These results support the imperative need to implement adherence-support therapies, simplification regimen strategies, and close observation of high-risk individuals to reduce the adverse effects in geriatric heart car