[Polypharmacotherapy in clinical gerontology]

Multimorbidity frequently develops in old age and it is usually accompanied with pharmacotherapy of elderly patients. The growing number of seniors and comparatively low attention given to this reality among the medical community makes the problem highly significant for the practical medicine. Solution requires in the broad medical community a deeper knowledge of gerontopharmacotherapy and of its specific features, including the pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics in elderly organism. Non-geriatric physicians will face in their daily clinical praxis the questions of drug interactions and undesirable general and local side effects. Moreover, some foods, beverages or preservatives can influence the pharmacological effect. Due to multimorbidity in the senescence, such problems can be linked to large geriatric syndromes (instability with downfalls, immobility, decubitus, incontinency, intellectual and sensory defects of vision and hearing).