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Pharmacy visitors can be divided into three groups based on their medication consumption: intensive care patients, chronic patients and random patients
Of the 13 million pharmacy visitors in 2023, 1.8 million people were chronically taking medications from five or more therapy groups. These high-care patients mainly used various types of CVRM medications and associated concomitant medications. That’s what the SFK writes this week in the Pharmaceutical Weekblad.
Pharmacy visitors can be divided into three groups based on their medication consumption: intensive care patients, chronic patients and random patients. Care-intensive patients, also known as polypharmacy patients, chronically take medications from five or more different therapy groups (ATC3 level). Chronic use occurs when the same drug is administered more than three times a year or when an amount is administered at least once over a period of ninety or more days. If patients consume substances from up to four different groups over a longer period of time, they are classified as chronic patients. Occasional patients only use a medicine occasionally, i.e. not chronically.
Intensive care
In 2023, public pharmacies provided around 13 million people with medication, of which 1.8 million patients are classified as requiring high levels of care. The proportion of intensive care patients in the pharmacy was 14%, at the same level as in the past five years. Two thirds of the intensive care patients chronically consumed medications from five, six or seven drug groups, and around 15% consumed medications from ten or more different groups.
The number of chronic pharmacy visitors last year was 6.1 million, which is 46% of all pharmacy visitors; the remaining 5.2 million patients (40%) were occasional drug users.
CVRM
The top 10 drug groups most commonly used by polypharmacy patients are dominated by CVRM medications and recommended concomitant medications. Four drug groups are used chronically by more than half of intensive care patients. First of all, these are the antacids, which are taken long-term by 74% of intensive care patients. Next come antithrombotics (66%), closely followed by cholesterol-lowering agents (65%). The fourth group concerns beta-blockers, which are taken chronically by more than half (52%) of polypharmacy patients.
Source: SFK
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