polypharmacy

English

Etymology

From poly- +‎ pharmacy, after Ancient Greek πολυφάρμακος (poluphármakos).

Pronunciation

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Noun

polypharmacy (uncountable)

1. (medicine) The use of multiple drugs to treat multiple concurrent disorders in the same (now especially elderly) patient, chiefly with connotations of indiscriminate or excessive prescription (involving overmedication and overprescription). [from 18th c.]
   • 1997, Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Folio Society, published 2016, page 226:

     Critics denounced physicians as meddlesome, capriciously practising an often dangerous polypharmacy – a blunderbuss approach.

   • 2017, Laura Spinney, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World, →ISBN:

     Faced with wheezing, blue-faced patients, they felt they had to do something, and the approach they adopted was polypragmatism, or polypharmacy: they threw the medicine cabinet at the problem.

Derived terms

• hyperpolypharmacy

Translations

Translations

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 多重用藥 / 多重用药 (duōchóng yòngyào)

• Finnish: monilääkitys
• German: Multimedikation f, Polypharmazie f, Polypharmakotherapie f
• Icelandic: lyfjaofgjöf f
• Japanese: 多剤併用 (たざいへいよう, tazaiheiyō)
• Latin: polypharmacia f
• Spanish: polimedicación f

See also

• multidrug (adj)
• polypill