Incidence of Poly pharmacy among emergency patients at a Tertiary Care Hospital in Karachi: An Ignored Paradigm for Quality Drug Therapy.

A prescription containing five or more drugs is likely to result in adverse consequences that may involve hospital admission, falls & many other complications. Increasing incidence of Polypharmacy among patients visiting ED calls for a more judicious and cautious approach to prescribing with a focus on long term as well as short term health care issues. To estimate the incidence and current trend of poly-pharmacy among patients (pediatric and adults) visiting emergency department (ED) of a at a tertiary care hospital. It was retrospective study in which those patients’ data who visited the emergency department of Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) was reviewed & analyzed. The duration of study is between January, 2012 to December, 2012. The detailed clinical records of randomly selected patient through a simple random sampling method were retrieved out of 51,000 patients visited ED during the period. Total 51,000 patients visited ED during study period, out of those 372 patients were randomly selected. Polypharmacy was common in 69.9% (251) of patients with elderly population were most effected age group P < 0.05. Male were 51.9 % (193) & adults were 80.4% (295). The most common triage category was P1 40.2% (100). Top most diagnosis was respiratory tract infection with antibiotic was the most prescribed drugs in ED 91% (340). The perils and problems associated with Poly pharmacy are a subject of interest as polypharmacy found to be significant finding among all ED patients