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. [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

• overmedicate