Abstract

Introduction: Dyspepsia is the most common gastrointestinal problem. Majority of dyspepsia is functional dyspepsia. Due to the high prevalence of dyspepsia, inappropriate use of upper GI Endoscopy can lead to unnecessary costs, risk of complications, and associated with reduced diagnostic yield.
Objectives:

To determine the prevalence of significant endoscopic finding (SEF) and H.Pylori in dyspeptic patients.
To determine the response of dyspeptic patients to PPIs and H.pylori eradication therapy.
To assess the factors predicting SEF in dyspeptic patients.

Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted for a period of 18 months among 100 patients with dyspepsia at department of general surgery of a tertiary care hospital. Data was collected using a semi-structured questionnaire by interview technique. The study subjects were subjected to upper gastro-intestinal endoscopy during which biopsies were taken and sent for routine histopathology examination. Descriptive and inferential statistics has been carried out in the present study. A P value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results: The mean age of the study subjects was 45.13±14.06 years. Pain abdomen was the commonest (82.0%) alarm symptom of dyspepsia and 64.0% of those with dyspepsia were smokers and 61.0% were alcoholics. Overall prevalence of significant endoscopic finding (SEF) was 36.0% and duodenal ulcer (22.0%) was the commonest of all. 71.0% revealed H.pylori infection and at least 90.0% responded well to proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) and triple drug therapy. Among the different factors, bloating or belching was found to be significantly associated with the SEF.
Conclusion: The prevalence of SEF was 36.0% and H.pylori was 71.0%. Most of them i.e. 90.0% responded both clinically and microbiologically to the treatment and bloating or belching was a significant alarm symptom associated with SEF. A trial of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) and triple drug therapy can be considered before subjecting the patients to the invasive procedure of endoscopy.