Prescribing pattern in elderly patients admitted at muhimbili national hospital

Introduction; Elderly patients are people aged 60 years and above. Due to their physiological changes, they face many common diseases with multiple medications; hence they are susceptible to drug-drug interaction. Purpose; To assess the prescribing pattern among elderly patients admitted in the internal medicine ward at Muhimbili national hospital (MNH). Methods; A retrospective study, carried out using prescriptions issued to the geriatric patients, 60 years and above, admitted in the internal medicine ward at MNH. Results; Of the 441 patient files conveniently selected. Majorities were males 238(54%) and mean age 1 SD was 69.817.6. The average number of drugs taken by patient per day was 5. The medications prescribed by generic names were 1805 (75.3%). 85 (19.27%) patients had one or more potentially inappropriate medicines from Beer’s criteria and 10 patients (2.27%) with drug — drug interactions were ascertained according to study done by Hines et al, 2011 in elderly patients. The study established significant association between occurrence of inappropriate medication with number of diagnosis (P=0.0018) and number of medications (P=0.0001)- The most common potentially inappropriate medication encountered was ferrous sulphate more than 325mg/day 57(12-92%), followed by Dioxin more than 125mg/day 15(3.4%) and the third was diazepam 9 (2.04%). Conclusion; Appropriate interventions are needed for health care providers