Polypharmacy cut-points in older people with cancer: how many medications are too many?

摘要: Polypharmacy is often defined as use of ‘five-or-more-medications’. However, the optimal polypharmacy cut-point for predicting clinically important adverse events in older people with cancer unclear. The aim was to determine sensitivities and specificities a range cut-points relation variety cancer. Data on medication use, falls frailty criteria were collected from 385 patients aged ≥70 years presenting medical oncology outpatient clinic. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves produced examine varying definitions exhaustion, falls, physical function, Karnofsky Performance Scale (KPS) frailty. Sub-analyses performed when stratifying by age, sex, comorbidity status analgesic use. Patients had mean age 76.7 years. Using Youden’s index, 6.5 medications (specificity 67.0 %, sensitivity 70.0 %), function (80.2 %, 49.3 %) KPS (69.8 %, 52.1 %), 5.5 (59.2 %, 73.0 %) 3.5 exhaustion (43.4 %, 74.5 %). For five-or-more-medications, (44.9 %, 77.5 %), (58.0 %, 69.7 %), (47.7 %, 69.4 %), (44.5 %, 75.7 %) (52.6 %, 64.1 %). similar sample stratified Our results suggest that no single multiple In this population, common definition five-or-more-medications reasonable identifying ‘at-risk’ review.