What is polypharmacy? A systematic review of definitions

BMC Geriatrics

Table 2 Various numerical only definitions of polypharmacy and associated terms in existing literature

Term	Number of medications	Number of studies	References
Polypharmacy	≥ 2	1	[13]
	2 to 9	1	[14]
	≥ 3	1	[15]
	3 to 6	1	[16]
	≥ 4	6	[17,18,19,20,21,22]
	≥ 4 or ≥ 5	1	[23]
	≥ 5	51	[11, 24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73]
	≥ 6	10	[10, 74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82]
	≥ 7	2	[83, 84]
	5 to 9	3	[85,86,87]
	≥ 9	1	[88]
	≥ 10	1	[89]
	≥ 11	1	[90]
	number of drug classes	1	[91]
Minor Polypharmacy	2 to 4	6	[92,93,94,95,96,97]
	2 to 3	1	[98]
	0 to 4	1	[99]
Moderate polypharmacy	4 to 5	1	[98]
Major polypharmacy	≥ 5	6	[92,93,94,95, 97, 100]
	≥ 6	3	[96, 98, 101]
	5 to 9	1	[99]
	≥ 11	1	[74]
Hyperpolypharmacy	≥ 10	1	[102]
Excessive polypharmacy	≥ 10	7	[30, 58, 65, 70, 85,86,87]
	≥ 21	1	[74]
Severe polypharmacy	≥ 10	1	[99]

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