• Yuta Hirose, Kiyoshi Shikino, Yoshiyuki Ohira, Sumihide Matsuoka, Chihiro Mikami, Hayami Tsuchiya, Daiki Yokokawa, Akiko Ikegami, Tomoko Tsukamoto, Kazutaka Noda, Takanori Uehara, and Masatomi Ikusaka.
• Department of General Medicine, Chiba University Hospital, 1-8-1, Inohana, Chuo-ku, Chiba-city, Chiba pref, Japan. yuta1076@yahoo.co.jp.
• Bmc Fam Pract. 2021 Feb 22; 22 (1): 42.

BackgroundPatient awareness surveys on polypharmacy have been reported previously, but no previous study has examined the effects of sending feedback to health professionals on reducing medication use. Our study aimed to conduct a patient survey to examine factors contributing to polypharmacy, feedback the results to health professionals, and analyze the resulting changes in the number of polypharmacy patients and prescribed medications.MethodsAfter conducting a questionnaire survey of patients in Study 1, we provided its results to the healthcare professionals, and then surveyed the number of polypharmacy patients and oral medications using a before-after comparative study design in Study 2. In Study 1, we examined polypharmacy and its contributing factors by performing logistic regression analysis. In Study 2, we performed a t-test and a chi-square test.ResultsIn the questionnaire survey, significant differences were found in the following 3 items: age (odds ratio (OR) = 3.14; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 2.01-4.91), number of medical institutions (OR = 2.34; 95%CI = 1.50-3.64), and patients' difficulty with asking their doctors to deprescribe their medications (OR = 2.21; 95%CI = 1.25-3.90). After the feedback, the number of polypharmacy patients decreased from 175 to 159 individuals and the mean number of prescribed medications per patient decreased from 8.2 to 7.7 (p < 0.001, respectively).ConclusionsProviding feedback to health professionals on polypharmacy survey results may lead to a decrease in the number of polypharmacy patients. Factors contributing to polypharmacy included age (75 years or older), the number of medical institutions (2 or more institutions), and patients' difficulty with asking their physicians to deprescribe their medications. Feedback to health professionals reduced the percentage of polypharmacy patients and the number of prescribed medications.Trial RegistrationUMIN. Registered 21 June 2020 - Retrospectively registered, https://www.umin.ac.jp/ctr/index-j.htm.

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