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A systematic overview of systematic reviews evaluating interventions addressing polypharmacy.

ABSTRACT: PURPOSE:To systematically evaluate and summarize evidence across multiple systematic reviews (SRs) examining interventions addressing polypharmacy. SUMMARY:MEDLINE, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE) were searched for SRs evaluating interventions addressing polypharmacy in adults published from January 2004 to February 2017. Two authors independently screened, appraised, and extracted information. SRs with Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) scores below 8 were excluded. After extraction of relevant conclusions from each SR, evidence was summarized and conclusions compared. Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) methodology was used to assess evidence quality. Six SRs met the inclusion criteria, 4 of which used meta-analytic pooling. Five SRs focused on older adults. Four were not restricted to any specific disease type, whereas 1 focused on proton pump inhibitors and another focused on patients with severe dementia. Care settings and measured outcomes varied widely. SRs examining the impact on patient-centered outcomes, including morbidity, mortality, patient satisfaction, and utilization, found inconsistent evidence regarding the benefit of polypharmacy interventions, but most concluded that interventions had either null or uncertain impact. Two SRs assessing medication appropriateness found very low-quality evidence of modest improvements with polypharmacy interventions. CONCLUSION:An overview of SRs of interventions to address polypharmacy found 6 recent and high-quality SRs, mostly focused on older adults, in which both process and outcome measures were used to evaluate interventions. Despite the low quality of evidence in the underlying primary studies, both SRs that assessed medication appropriateness found evidence that polypharmacy interventions improved it. However, there was no consistent evidence of any impact on downstream patient-centered outcomes such as healthcare utilization, morbidity, or mortality.

SUBMITTER: Anderson LJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7170727 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:PurposeTo systematically summarize evidence from multiple systematic reviews (SRs) examining interventions addressing medication nonadherence and to discern differences in effectiveness by intervention, patient, and study characteristics.SummaryMEDLINE, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects were searched for papers published from January 2004 to February 2017. English-language SRs examining benefits of medication adherence interventions were eligible. Inclusion was limited to adult patients prescribed medication for 1 of the following disease conditions: diabetes and prediabetes, heart conditions, hypertension and prehypertension, stroke, and cognitive impairment. Non-disease-specific SRs that considered medication adherence interventions for older adults, adults with chronic illness, and adults with known medication adherence problems were also included. Two researchers independently screened titles, abstracts, and full-text articles. They then extracted key variables from eligible SRs, reconciling discrepancies via discussion. A MeaSurement Tool to Assess systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) was used to assess SRs; those with scores below 8 were excluded. Conclusions regarding intervention effectiveness were extracted. Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) methodology was applied to assess evidence quality.ResultsOf 390 SRs, 25 met the inclusion criteria and assessed adherence as a primary outcome. Intervention types most consistently found to be effective were dose simplification, patient education, electronic reminders to patients, and reduced patient cost sharing or incentives. Of 50 conclusions drawn by the SRs, the underlying evidence was low or very low quality for 45 SRs.ConclusionDespite an abundance of primary studies and despite only examining high-quality SRs, the vast majority of primary studies supporting SR authors' conclusions were of low or very low quality. Nonetheless, health system leaders seeking to improve medication adherence should prioritize interventions that have been studied and found to be effective at improving patient adherence, including dose simplification, education, reminders, and financial incentives.

Project description:BackgroundPharmacy interventions are a subset of public health interventions and its research is usually performed within the scope of a trial. The economic evaluation of pharmacy interventions requires certain considerations which have some similarities to those of public health interventions and to economic evaluations alongside trials. The objective of this research is to perform an overview of systematic reviews of economic evaluations of pharmacy services and triangulate results with recommendations for economic evaluations of both public health interventions and alongside trials.Methods(1) Exploratory review of recommendations on the economic evaluation of public health interventions, (2) exploratory review of recommendations for conducting economic evaluations alongside trials, (3) overview of systematic reviews of economic evaluations of pharmacy interventions (protocol registered with PROSPERO 2016 outlining information sources, inclusion criteria, appraisal of reviews and synthesis methods).ResultsFourteen systematic reviews containing 75 index publications were included. Reviews reported favorable economic findings for 71% of studies with full economic evaluations. The types of economic analysis are diverse. Two critical quality domains are absent from most reviews. Key findings include the following: certain types of risk of bias, wider scope of study designs, and most economic quality criteria met but some issues unresolved or unclear. Triangulation revealed additional gaps. Limitations include choice of critical quality domains and potential biases in the overview process.ConclusionsEconomic evaluations of pharmacy-based public health interventions seem to follow most economic quality criteria, but there are still some issues in certain key areas to improve. These findings may assist in improving the design of pilot trials of economic evaluations in pharmacy, leading to robust evidence for payers. Based on the findings, we propose a methodological approach for the economic evaluation of pharmacy-based public health interventions.Systematic review registrationPROSPERO CRD42016032768.

Project description:BackgroundInequalities in access to and utilization of maternal and child health (MCH) care are hampering progress on the path to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. In a number of Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) population subgroups at disproportionate risk of being left behind are the urban poor. Within this neglected group is the further neglected group of the homeless. Concomitantly, a number of interventions from the antenatal period onward have been piloted, tested, and scaled in these contexts. We carried out an overview of systematic reviews (SRs) to characterize the evidence around maternal and child health interventions relevant to urban poor homeless populations in LMICs.MethodsWe searched Medline, Cochrane Library, Health Systems Evidence and EBSCOhost databases for SRs published between January 2009 and 2020 (with an updated search through November 2021). Our population of interest was women or children from urban poor settings in LMICs; interventions and outcomes corresponded with the World Health Organization's (WHO) guidance document. Each SR was assessed by two reviewers using established standard critical appraisal checklists. The overview was registered in PROSPERO (ID: CRD42021229107).ResultsIn a sample of 33 high quality SRs, we found no direct relevant evidence for pregnant and lactating homeless women (and children) in the reviewed literature. There was a lack of emphasis on evidence related to family planning, safe abortion care, and postpartum care of mothers. There was mixed quality evidence that the range of nutritional interventions had little, unclear or no effect on several child mortality and development outcomes. Interventions related to water, sanitation, and hygiene, ensuring acceptability of community health services and health promotion type programs could be regarded as beneficial, although location seemed to matter. Importantly, the risk of bias reporting in different reviews did not match, suggesting that greater attention to rigour in their conduct is needed.ConclusionThe generalizability of existing systematic reviews to our population of interest was poor. There is a clear need for rigorous primary research on MCH interventions among urban poor, and particularly homeless populations in LMICs, as it is as yet unclear whether the same, augmented, or altogether different interventions would be required.

Project description:Background: Patients over 65 years of age taking multiple medications face several risks, and pharmaceutical interventions can be useful to improve quality of care and reduce those risks. However, there is still no consensus on the effectiveness of these interventions aimed at promoting changes in clinical, epidemiological, economic, and humanistic outcomes for various service delivery, organizational, financial, and implementation-based interventions. The objective of this overview of systematic reviews was to summarize evidence on the effectiveness of community-level pharmaceutical interventions to reduce the risks associated with polypharmacy in the population over 65 years of age. Method: This overview used a previously described protocol to search for systematic review articles, with and without meta-analysis, and economic evaluations, without any language or time restrictions, including articles published up to May 2018. The following databases were searched: the Cochrane Library, Epistemonikos, Health Evidence, Health Systems Evidence, Virtual Health Library, and Google Scholar. The basic search terms used were "elderly," "polypharmacy," and "pharmaceutical interventions." The findings for outcomes of interest were categorized using a taxonomy for health policies and systems. Equity-related questions were also investigated. The studies were evaluated for methodological quality and produced a narrative synthesis. Results: A total of 642 records were retrieved: 50 from Health Evidence, 197 from Epistemonikos, 194 from Cochrane, 116 from Health Systems Evidence, and 85 from the Virtual Health Library. Of these, 16 articles were selected: 1 overview of systematic reviews, 12 systematic reviews, and 3 economic evaluations. There is evidence of improvement in clinical, epidemiological, humanistic, and economic outcomes for various types of community-level pharmaceutical interventions, but differences in observed outcomes may be due to study designs, primary study sample sizes, risk of bias, difficulty in aggregating data, heterogeneity of indicators and quality of evidence included in the systematic reviews that were assessed. It is necessary to optimize the methodological designs of future primary and secondary studies. Conclusion: Community-level pharmaceutical interventions can improve various clinical, epidemiological, humanistic and economic outcomes and potentially reduce risks associated with polypharmacy in the elderly population.

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A systematic overview of systematic reviews evaluating interventions addressing polypharmacy.

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