Correlation between Polypharmacy and Health-Related Quality of Life in Patients of Hypertension
Author(s): Tanisha Paramba and Sarju Zilate*
Abstract
Purpose: Hypertension is one of the major morbidities affecting older Indians, though current trends show that it is increasingly beginning to be detected in younger adults as well. In elderly populations, it has been shown to be associated with other comorbidities which make its treatment difficult. Among the issues that have arisen with its treatment is the increased prevalence of polypharmacy. Thus there is a need to assess the effect such increase in medications is having on a patient’s Health Related Quality of Life in order to ensure only appropriate polypharmacy is practised. Methods: The RAND SF-36 questionnaire for HRQoL will be sent to a random sampling of hypertensive patients in India. They will all be medically diagnosed with hypertension at least 6 months prior and will have been prescribed allopathic medication for the same. They will be instructed to answer all the questions to the best of their abilities and each question will be then scored from 0-100. In addition, they will be given questions regarding their age, socioeconomic demographic, number of medications and frequency of dosage, and additional comorbidities. The independent variable i.e. the number of medications will then be compared to the physical and mental scores they received on the SF-36 questionnaire to see if there is a correlation between the two. Hypothesis: Patients with additional comorbidities and those taking more number of medications will score lower in Health Related Quality of Life.