PHARMACOTHERAPEUTIC PROFILE OF ELDERLY ASSISTED BY A DOMICILIARY MEDICATIONS DISTRIBUTION PROGRAM.

Introduction and objective: The elderly are the age group that uses the larger amount of drugs due to the coexistence of chronic diseases, as well as pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic characteristics that make them more vulnerable to adverse effects and drug interactions. The objective of this study was to describe the pharmacotherapeutic profile of elderly people assisted by the Medicine at Home Program (PRC) in the city of Itajaí. Methodology: It was a quantitative, cross-sectional study, using secondary data relative to the month of June of 2014. The registered data of program users were collected from pdf files and entered into Excel for descriptive statistics analysis. Results and discussion: We analyzed data from 2226 elderly. The average age was 72,9 years old, 41,4% were between 70-79 years old and 67, 4% were women. There was an average of 4.04 medicines per individual and a prevalence of 36,7% of polypharmacy. The most common drugs were those acting on the cardiovascular system (98,0%), hydrochlorothiazide (52,2%) being the more frequent one. Among the drug combinations observed with frequencies higher them 10%, five were classified as having a moderated risk by Micromedex system. The pharmacotherapeutic profile identified was similar to the one of elderly studied in other Brazilian cities: high frequency of polypharmacy and potentially dangerous drug combinations. This study also provided an initial evaluation for this municipal health care program.