Objectives: Helicobacter Pylori(HP) is a very common infection in the communities. More than half of the people in the world population carry this bacterium in the gastric mucosa. Dyspepsia is a collection of the symptoms that cause difficulties in both explaining the symptoms to physicians or defining these complaints as a disease by the physician. This study explores the prevalence of HP in patients with dyspeptic complaints who applied to family medicine outpatient department in a tertiary care institute, aiming at investigating the possible relationship between Dyspepsia and HP.
Methods: This was retrospective a study of 124 patients with dyspeptic complaints who were admitted to an outpatient clinic of tertiary care institute. Patients were screened for the symptoms suggestive of dyspepsia and underwent carbon Urea Breath Test (UBT) to identify HP positivity and prevalence. The results were analyzed using SPSS-PASW Statistics-17 package program.
Results: There was no significant relation between dyspepsia and HP positivity in terms of gender and age groups. The prevalence of HP in patients with dyspeptic complaints was found to be lower than that in the general population.
Conclusion: The prevalence of HP in patients with dyspeptic complaints was lower than that in the general population. The result of this study may be due to the decrease in the prevalence of HP in recent years. This, however, does not support that the prevalence of HP is definitely low in patients with dyspeptic complaints.