Demographics of patient and the prevalence of PIMs
The mean age of the total 4,847,181 patients included in this study was 73.6±7.6 years, and 47.9% (n=2,322,541) of them were female. Details of patient demographics by sex were described in Table 1. The patients had an average of four comorbidities, among which hypertension (n=3,065,235, 63.2%), coronary heart disease (n=2,259,965, 46.6%), diabetes mellitus (n=1,732,952, 35.8%), hyperlipidemia (n=811,402, 16.7%), cancer (n=570,849, 11.8%) were the five highest-ranked comorbidities.
In total, 40.1% of elderly patients were prescribed with at least one PIM based on the 2019 Beers Criteria, including 22.3% prescribed with one PIM and 14.8% with two. The highest PIM prevalence was observed in male patients of 91 to 95 years group (26.4%), and in female patients of above 95 years group (20.9%). In every age group, the percentage of male patients with PIM prescriptions was higher than that of female patients. The prevalence of PIMs by age group and gender in the one-year study period was illustrated in figure 1.