Pharmacotherapy is undoubtedly the most common clinical intervention for many disease conditions. While it can be highly effective in treating diseases or slowing disease progression, there are often concerns raised regarding the inappropriate use of drugs. This can lead to adverse drug reactions (ADR) and drug-drug interactions (DDI). The term polypharmacy means "multiple medications" and is considered to be present when a patient takes five or more medications. It may be "appropriate polypharmacy" when all drugs are prescribed for specific therapeutic objectives and the drug therapy has been optimised to minimise the risk of ADR. However, on occasions "inappropriate polypharmacy" might be present, when one or more drugs are prescribed that are no longer needed, and the combination of several drugs puts the patient at an unacceptably high risk of ADR.