Inappropriate medication prescribing for elderly brazilians living in nursing homes

The use of potentially inappropriate medications (PIM) for the elderly is a serious public health problem because it is intrinsically linked to increased morbidity and mortality, causing high costs to public health systems.Evaluate the prevalence of the use of potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) and the associated risk factors for elderly residents at institutions. The study was conducted in six nursing homes for elderly in big cities of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. 261 elderly residents of nursing homes aged ≥ 60 years took part in this study. Data were collected through documentary analysis of medical records. The identification of PIM was performed according to the resulting lists of recently updated Beers criteria and the relationship between risk factors and use of PIM was evaluated using the chi-square and a multiple logistic regression model. Among the elderly persons who used medications every day, 209 (82.6%) were taking at least one PIM. Polymorbidity variables (OR 3.00, CI: 0.80–11.35), depression (OR 1.59, CI: 0.64–4.01), and diabetes mellitus (OR 2.6, CI: 0.87–7.77) lost significance after they were included in the logistic regression model, whereas polypharmacy (p = 0.033), psychiatric disorders (p ≤ 0.001) and cerebrovascular disease (p = 0.006) remained strongly associated with the use of inappropriate medication even after multivariate analysis. The study's results show a high prevalence of PIM use among the elderly in Brazilian care homes, with polypharmacy, psychiatric disorders, and cerebrovascular disease being the most strongly associated risk factors.