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Abstract
Background: People are not living in better health in the world. The raised in multimorbidity, joined with growing number of use of medicines, became a concern of healthcare professionals significantly. Polypharmacy is significantly related with medicine associated problems.
Materials and Methods: A multi-center cross-sectional study was conducted in the 3 clinical setups of Hyderabad, Province Sindh, Pakistan from December 2023 to March 2024. The calculated sample size for the study was 357 using Cochrane formula. Both gender male and female patients of age above 20 years and diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis disease were included in the study. Patients who were below 20 years age and having chronic disease were excluded. The data was collected by conducting structured interview of the patients to collect the patient’s demographic data and the DTPs data was collected by using patient’s prescription and medical file. Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 26 for descriptive analysis, cross tabulation and chi square test were performed for analyzing the association between the variables, and the qualitative data.
Results: Out of 357 participants 76.8% (274) was female population and 23.2% (83) was male population. The history of Rheumatoid Arthritis in family showed that 74.2% (n=265) of patients do not have family history only 25.8% (n=92) having family history and 77.3% (n=276) patients were having the comorbidities. The total identified number of drug therapy problems were 753 in 357 patients. The most common prescribed drug class was Glucocorticoids 353 (98%). Drug selection problem was reported with its association with polypharmacy as the polypharmacy increased the drug selection problem (p value is 0.003) and dose selection was also found significant having p value 0.002. Conclusion: This study showed that the drug related problems are more prevalent in rheumatoid arthritis patients, this study also demonstrated that the drug related problems are strongly associated with polypharmacy.