TV doctor Amir Khan has issued a warning to anyone taking drugs such as statins, ramipril and metformin, as more than 8 million people in the UK are on five or more medications. Appearing on ITV’s Lorraine show, the NHS GP said people are ending up in hospital because they are being overmedicated with drugs they have sometimes been on for 30 or more years.
Millions on multiple medications
Dr Khan explained that 2.2 million people are taking 10 or more medications. He noted that patients may have been on drugs for high blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol – for example statins, ramipril and metformin – for years, but their bodies may have changed.
He said: “8 million people across the UK are taking five or more medications. 2.2 million are taking 10 or more medications, and it’s resulting in about a thousand hospital admissions due to side effects of medication. Now we do have a term for this. It’s called polypharmacy. Anyone who’s on five medications or more is called polypharmacy. It’s not automatically a bad thing because lots of people are on medication that are keeping them alive and well.”
Don’t stop medication
He emphasised that people should not just stop taking their prescriptions: “So we don’t want anyone just to stop their medication. And you can see how this can happen. If someone has high blood pressure, diabetes, or has just had a heart attack, they can be quite easily. Just those three things alone can mean you’re on five or more medications and that’s keeping you healthy and living longer as well. The problem we have is that often people start these medications in their 50s and 60s and are still on them in their 80s as well.
“So the prescription stays the same, but the person has changed over that time. Their kidney function may have changed, their weight may have changed, their liver function. All of these things that drugs rely on to break down and work could have changed resulting in more side effects. And that’s the issue.”
Side effects mistaken for new illnesses
Sometimes patients see the doctor because something has happened and they are having a problem – however sometimes it is due to side effects from their pills. Dr Khan said: “So the other thing is older people are more prone to these side effects, they come in and see doctors and they rather than saying this is a side effect of the medication, they treat it as a new illness and get a new tablet for it as well. And they could be under a specialist who gives them another tablet for that.
“Often with medicine, you look at single diseases. You got high blood pressure, let’s treat that. You got another single disease, diabetes, let’s treat that. But we need to look at the people taking these medications as a whole. So the answer here is deprescribing, taking medication off is really important looking at people as a whole rather than individual diseases.
“But I think the key people to do all of this is pharmacists in GP surgeries. We’re getting more and more of them. They are brilliant at looking at which medications need to stay on, which ones can come off. That is the key to deprescribing and managing this issue.”
Readers share experiences
Some of his followers warned that coming off pills could be an issue too. One said: “Well, our GP recently took my 83-year-old mum off a heart tablet as she’d been on it twenty years ...guess what ...she’s now been put on it again as her blood pressure rocketed and her feet swelled up.”
Another added: “People should have regular medication reviews as to whether they need all the meds they’re on and interactions.” A follower agreed: “You’re so right, Amir. Very interesting today. This happened with my dad as he got older. The pharmacists are great at what they do.”
