How Willing Are Patients or Their Caregivers to Deprescribe: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Background Polypharmacy is associated with the increased use of potentially inappropriate medications, where the risks of medicine use outweigh its benefits. Stopping medicines (deprescribing) that are no longer needed can be beneficial to reduce the risk of adverse events. We summarized the willingness of patients and their caregivers towards deprescribing. Methods A systematic search was conducted in four databases from inception until April 30, 2021 as well as search of citation of included articles. Studies that reported patients’ and/or their caregivers’ attitude towards deprescribing quantitatively were included. All studies were independently screened, reviewed, and data extracted in duplicates. Patients and caregivers willingness to deprescribe their regular medication was pooled using random effects meta-analysis of proportions. Results Twenty-nine unique studies involving 11,049 participants were included. All studies focused on the attitude of the patients towards deprescribing, and 7 studies included caregivers’ perspective. Overall, 87.6% (95% CI: 83.3 to 91.4%) patients were willing to deprescribe their medication, based upon the doctors’ suggestions. This was lower among caregivers, with only 74.8% (49.8% to 93.8%) willing to deprescribe their care recipients’ medications. Patients’ or caregivers’ willingness to deprescribe were not influenced by study location, study population, or the number of medications they took. Discussion Most patients and their caregivers were willing to deprescribe their medications, whenever possible and thus should be offered a trial of deprescribing. Nevertheless, as these tools have a poor predictive ability, patients and their caregivers should be engaged during the deprescribing process to ensure that the values and opinions are heard, which would ultimately improve patient safety. In terms of limitation, as not all studies may published the methods and results of measurement they used, this may impact the methodological quality and thus our findings. Open Science Framework registration https:// osf.io/fhg94