Antibiotics prescription at the ENT’s out-patient Department of the Yaoundé University Teaching Hospital

Abstract

Background: Infectious diseases are commonly diagnosed in Otolaryngology’s practice in Sub-Saharan African countries. The main objective of this research was to study the antibiotics prescription and its compliance during OPD’s consultations at the ENT unit of the Yaoundé University Teaching Hospital.

Methods: We carried out a 5 months cross sectional. All patients who consulted at the ENT’s OPD and received an antibiotic prescription during that period where included in the study. We required a signed informed consent before their inclusion. The antibiotic prescription compliance was assessed using the recommendations from the French “Haute Autorité de la Santé” edited in 2008 on the Good usage of antibiotics. Data analysis was done with SPSS 25.0 software.

Results: Antibiotics were prescribed in 19.8% of patients, Concerning the patients diagnosed with an infectious ORL pathology, they received up to 77.1% of antibiotics prescriptions. Women represented 56.7% of the population. The mean age was 24. The most common diagnosis was otitis followed by tonsillitis. The bi-antibiotherapy was mostly prescribed, Beta lactams were the most common antibiotic as well as the Access antibiotics. The rate of compliant prescription of antibiotics was not more than 17.2%.

Conclusion: One patient out of five consulting at the OPD of the ENT will receive an antibiotic prescription. Eight patients out of ten will receive an antibiotic if they present with an ENT clinical infection, among those patients only one out of five will get a compliant antibiotic prescription.