Stroke, multimorbidity and polypharmacy in a nationally representative sample of 1,424,378 patients in Scotland: implications for treatment burden

Descripción:
The prevalence of multimorbidity (the presence of two or more long-term conditions) is rising internationally. Multimorbidity affects patients by increasing their burden of symptoms, but is also likely to increase the self-care demands, or treatment burden, that they experience. Treatment burden refers to the effort expended in operationalising treatments, navigating healthcare systems and managing relations with healthcare providers. This is an important problem for people with chronic illness such as stroke. Polypharmacy is an important marker of both multimorbidity and burden of treatment. In this study, we examined the prevalence of multimorbidity and polypharmacy in a large, nationally representative population of primary care patients with and without stroke, adjusting for age, sex and deprivation.

Como citar:

Gallacher KI, Batty GD, McLean G, Mercer SW, Guthrie B, May CR, Langhorne P, Mair FS. Stroke, multimorbidity and polypharmacy in a nationally representative sample of 1,424,378 patients in Scotland: implications for treatment burden. BMC Med. 2014 Oct 3;12:151. Available at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/12/151

 

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