Your Health Introduction: Comorbidities exist when a person has more than one long term disease and condition they are trying to manage. Comorbidities that exist in the population are heart diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, respiratory diseases, mental health including dementia, joint disease and cerebrovascular disease. These are often managed by many medicines (often more than 4 or 5) and this is an example of polypharmacy. Comorbidities and polypharmacy coexist due to a rise in aging population or where patients are living with several long term conditions that can be compounded by disability and/or frailty. It is essential for polypharmacy patients to receive a medicines review which is recommended to be carried out at least once or twice per year. The purpose of a medicines review is to check whether the medicines prescribed are taken correctly and at the right intervals. It also reviews their optimisation for each patient to evaluate effectiveness on quality of life and mortality. HEALTH PROMOTION: Health promotion and disease prevention within an aging population early on is not only beneficial for the individual but also for the growing population and the NHS. The main focus of programmes like these is to keep people healthy and to provide opportunities to empower individuals to choose healthy behaviours and to make informed changes to reduce the risks of developing chronic long term diseases. 10
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