Introduction: Elderly patients are the most common group who use heath care facilities. Use of potentially inappropriate medications results in adverse health outcomes thereby affecting quality of health care system. This study assesses the prevalence of prescription of potentially inappropriate medications in elderly patients presenting to the geriatric clinic of a tertiary care hospital in Kerala for first time.

Materials and methods:    

The study was a hospital based retrospective study. The data from patients presenting to Geriatrics clinic from period of 1 st January 2016 to 31 st December 2016 were retrieved from the medical records and assessed for potentially inappropriate drugs in accord with modified 2012 Beer’s criteria.

Results

A total of 275 patients were included in the study of which 110 (40%) were males and 165 (60%) were females. 81 (29.5%) out of 275 patients had at least one potentially inappropriate medication. The most common inappropriately prescribed medication belonged to psychotropic drug class (12.4%)  followed by central nervous system (9.8%).   It was found on statistical analysis that age and gender of the patients had no association with potentially inappropriate medication use.

Conclusion

The prescription potentially inappropriate medications is a serious problem which can affect overall quality of health care. Hence regular medication review and  reconciliation practices should be implemented to prevent this to an extent