Preoperative polypharmacy assessment for risk stratification and management.

POLYPHARMACY; GERIATRIC care units; RISK assessment; SPECIALTY pharmacies; DRUG side effects; MEDICAL personnel

When considering individual drug classes according to the Screening Tools of Older Person's Prescriptions (STOPP) and Alert to Right Treatment (START) criteria, the use of cardiovascular drugs, central nervous system (CNS) drugs, and proton pump inhibitors was strongly associated with incident functional decline. However, another fundamental issue when investigating polypharmacy is whether the potential risk of adverse outcomes is primarily related to the extent of individual patient exposure to medications, that is, the total number of concomitant drugs, or, instead, driven by specific medications and/or drug classes. On the other hand, the use of specific drugs and drug classes might put patients at higher risk of mid- and long-term functional decline independently of surgery and, consequently, the use of general anaesthetics. [Extracted from the article]

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