JPSIM Journal of Pakistan Society of Internal Medicine J Pak Soc Intern Med 2709-8729 2710-0804 Pakistan Society of Internal Medicine 10.70302/jpsim.v2i4.2163 jpsim.v2i4.2163 Editorial Polypharmacy in the Elderly: Time to Take Action and a Personal Perspective Jamil M. Qudoos Mir Fraz A. fam31@cam.ac.uk * General Practitioner, Surrey Consultant Physician, Cambridge, UK *Correspondence: Fraz A. Mir (fam31@cam.ac.uk) 14 12 2021 2021 2 4 281 283 09 09 2021 30 09 2021 Copyright © 2021 The Author(s) 2021 The Author(s) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 1 World Health Organization. Medication safety in polypharmacy: technical report. [updated 2019, cited 2021] Available from: [https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/medication-safety-in-polypharmacy-technical-report] 2 Department of health and social care, UK. National overprescribing report: Independent Report. [Updated 2021, cited 2021]Available from: [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-overprescribing-review-report] 3 Ahmed B, Nanji K, Mujeeb R, Patel MJ. Effects of polypharmacy on adverse drug reactions among geriatric outpatients at a tertiary care hospital in Karachi: a prospective cohort study. PLoS One. 2014;9(11):e112133. 4 Sarwar MR, Iftikhar S, Sarfraz M. Influence of Education Level of Older Patients on Polypharmacy, Potentially Inappropriate Medications Listed in Beer's Criteria, and Unplanned Hospitalization: A Cross-Sectional Study in Lahore, Pakistan. Medicina (Kaunas). 2018;54(4):57. 5 Mazhar F, Akram S, Malhi SM, Haider N. A prevalence study of potentially inappropriate medications use in hospitalized Pakistani elderly. Aging Clin Exp Res. 2018;30(1):53-60. 6 Das N, Khan AN, Badini ZA, Baloch H, Parkash J. Prescribing practices of consultants at Karachi, Pakistan. J Pak Med Assoc. 2001;51(2):74-7. 7 Butool I, Nazir S, Afridi M, Shah SM. Evaluation and assessment of prescribing patterns in elderly patients using two explicit criteria based screening tools: (The PRISCUS list and STOPP/START criteria). Pak J Med Sci. 2018;34(6):1357-62. 8 Maher RL, Hanlon J, Hajjar ER. Clinical consequences of polypharmacy in elderly. Expert Opin Drug Saf. 2014;13(1):57-65. 9 Leelakanok N, Holcombe AL, Lund BC, Gu X, Schweizer ML. Association between polypharmacy and death: A systematic review and meta-analysis. J Am Pharm Assoc. 2017;57(6):729-38. 10 British National Formulary. [Updated 2021, Cited 2021]. Available from: [https://bnf.org] 11 Molokhia M, Majeed A. Current and future perspectives on the management of polypharmacy. BMC Fam Pract. 2017;18(1):70. 12 Siddiqui A, Siddiqui AS, Jawaid M, Zaman KA. Physician's Perception Versus Patient's Actual Incidence of Drug Non-adherence in Chronic Illnesses. Cureus. 201;9(11):e1893. 13 Prescribing Safety Assessments. [Updated 2021, Cited 2021]. Available from: [https://prescribingsafetyassessment.ac.uk/] 14 Jansen J, Naganathan V, Carter SM, McLachlan AJ, Nickel B, Irwig L, Bonner C, Doust J, Colvin J, Heaney A, Turner R, McCaffery K. Too much medicine in older people? Deprescribing through shared decision making. BMJ. 2016;353:i2893.