Abstract:
Background: Dyspepsia is a very common symptom in primary care and represents a frequent malady for which individuals consult a gastroenterologist. While many studies have shown that there is a high prevalence of dyspepsia worldwide, reports on the burden of disease in Africa are very limited. Although appearing benign, dyspepsia has a significant impact on a patient’s quality of life and it costs a lot in terms of drugs, medical visits, investigations and absenteeism from work. The aim of this project was to study the burden of dyspepsia among health care providers (HCP) at Butare University Teaching Hospital (BUTH) in Rwanda.
Methodology: We collected data from health care providers at BUTH over a 3 month period (October 1st to December 31, 2013). A questionnaire was administered to study participants. The questionnaire was made of 3 sections: The first section comprised socio-demographic data, the 2nd section was the Short form Leeds questionnaire (SF-LQD) which we used to detect the presence and the frequency of dyspepsia symptoms and the 3rd section was short form Nepean dyspepsia index (SF-NDI) which we used to study the impact of dyspepsia on quality of life in participants with dyspepsia. Questionnaires were administered and filled by trained interviewers.
Results: the questionnaire was administered to 378 subjects, all of whom provided responses to socio-demographic and SF-LQD questionnaires and 356 of whom eligible for and responded to the SF-NDI.
The prevalence of dyspepsia in our study was 38.9%.
Among those who had dyspepsia, 53.7% had very mild dyspepsia, 22.4 % had mild dyspepsia, 13.6% had moderate dyspepsia and 10.2% had severe dyspepsia.
Female to male ratio of affected participants was 2:1 and there was a significant association between female gender and dyspepsia (p<0.001).
There was association between dyspepsia and level of education (p=0.037 ) and there was no association between dyspepsia and marital status (p=0.683)
Behaviors like smoking (p=0.410), alcohol consumption (0.068); NSAID use (p=0.204) and aspirin use(p=0.208) were unrelated to development of dyspepsia.
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Participants with dyspepsia had high SF-NDI scores compared to non-dyspeptic participants and there was a correlation between poor quality of life and dyspepsia (p<0.001). Eating and drinking was the most affected domain in quality of life assessment.
Conclusion: The prevalence of dyspepsia among health-care providers in BUTH is high, and disproportionately impact females. Further studies are required to confirm the observed high prevalence rate of dyspepsia in other sites or nationally; and to determine possible etiologic factors..
