Frequency of lower respiratory tract infections in Karachi and comparison of different antibiotic agents used for the treatment

Abstract

The objective of this study is to compare the use of different antibiotics in lower respiratory tract infections at Jinnah postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), Karachi, Pakistan. A non blind randomized study design was used to for this study which was carried out in JPMC, for a period of four months. A total of 137 patients infected with various infections were selected and their prescribed treatments were compared with the recommended treatments. Rate of occurrence of different lower respiratory tract infections and drugs recommended at JPMC were statistically evaluated with P value <0.05. Two way ANOVA was used to determine the significance of the hypothesis. It is observed that there are a significant number of patients suffering from TB (42%), MDR-TB (18%) and pneumonia (11.6%), and there are also patients suffering from the fourth most common infection known as Pneumothorax (7.3%). The guidelines for treatment of these patients used in JPMC were analyzed by student-t test and ANOVA, and it was found that the modes of treatment are more or less same with the standard recommended therapies for these infections. It was concluded that the treatment which is being prescribed in JPMC is more or less similar with the recommended therapy but if the difference is observed, the reason may involve several factors like geographical region, ethnicity, tolerance and resistance, no availability of recommended medicine, and cost (government hospital for poor people). Key words: Lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs), antibiotics, comparison, evaluation, Jinnah Postgradute Medical Centre (JPMC).