Assistant Professor The University of Texas at Tyler Fisch College of Pharmacy Tyler, Texas, United States
Objective : To determine the annual prevalence of psychotropic polypharmacy among patients with dementia in the United States between 2015 and 2020, estimate the direct healthcare utilization and costs of psychotropic polypharmacy, and identify specific sources of higher healthcare utilization in this population. Our hypothesis is that the prevalence of psychotropic polypharmacy among dementia patients is high and will be associated with increased healthcare costs, potentially due to managing adverse outcomes such as injurious falls, fractures, and stroke, which will result in more visits to the clinic, physician’s office, urgent care, emergency department, and hospitalization.
Methods: This is a retrospective cohort analysis of the prevalence and direct healthcare costs associated with psychotropic polypharmacy among patients diagnosed with dementia or dementia-related disorders using the TriNetX global health research network database. The annual proportion of dementia patients with psychotropic polypharmacy and the number and therapeutic classes of concomitantly used psychotropic medications (antipsychotics, antidepressants, antiepileptics, and anxiolytics/sedative-hypnotics including barbiturates and benzodiazepines) will be described overall and categorized by patient characteristics. The average total annual direct healthcare costs and the costs categorized by specific type of health service (inpatient, outpatient, office visits, urgent care, emergency department visits, pharmacy, other) will be compared between dementia patients with and without psychotropic polypharmacy. A generalized linear regression model will be performed to identify if psychotropic polypharmacy was associated with average annual direct healthcare costs among dementia patients after adjusting for patient baseline characteristics.
Results: Data analysis is still ongoing. The results will be available in the poster published during the AACP annual meeting.
Conclusions: After completing the data analysis, the study findings will be available in the poster published during the AACP annual meeting.
