Background:

Potentially inappropriate prescription (PIP) constitutes a risk for the development of adverse effects of a drug that outweigh its benefits, which can be considered inappropriate medication use.

Objective:

To describe the prevalence of PIP in geriatric patients hospitalized at the internal medicine department of a referral hospital in Mexico.

Material and methods:

Cross-sectional, descriptive design, with simple allocation of medical records from patients older than 65 years hospitalized between January 2016 and August 2017. The STOPP/START criteria were applied to identify the number of PIPs, the number of prescribed medications, number and type of comorbidities, as well as days of hospital stay.

Results:

A prevalence of PIP of 73.3% was identified, with main comorbidities being hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus. A total of 1,885 prescribed medications were quantified; mean hospital stay was 6.3 days.

Conclusions:

A high prevalence of PIP was identified in hospitalized geriatric patients, hence the importance of applying the STOPP/START criteria and of the role of the pharmacist for validating the prescription prior to drug administration.