title: [Diagnosed morbidity in primary health care in the sanitary region of Sousse (Tunisia)].
abstract: Primary health care is one of the pillars of the Tunisian health care system. However, we have very little information about the specificities of general practice and the patterns of the morbidity encountered in this field. This study was interested on the diagnosed morbidity in primary health care settings. We aimed to illustrate the patterns of morbidity in general practice and identify the main diagnoses which are established by the general practitioners (GPs). The study design was descriptive and cross-sectional. 85 (out of 92) primary health centres of the province of Souse (Tunisia) have been included during one year, from June 2002 to May 2003. We have targeted a representative sample of 16.271 encounters in these primary care settings. On the methodological plan, we proceeded by a poll to two degrees; the first concerned the weeks within every season: 3 weeks were drawn out by lot; the second interested the encounters, proceeding by a systematic pull and the step of poll was fixed to 5. The International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC) was used to code recorded data. The main results of this study showed that among the 16.271 patient-doctor encounters we registered 24.882 reasons for encounter (RFE) (1.9 +/- 0.8 per encounter), 18.097 diagnoses (1.3 +/- 0.5 per encounter), and 40.190 procedures (3.2 +/- 1.9 per encounter). In this paper we have only explored the results of encounters related to the decision of general practitioners, i.e. the diagnosed morbidity. With regard to sex distribution there was a predominance of females (62%). The study population was relatively young as 50% were aged less than 25 years. According to ICPC chapters, we found that respiratory diseases were the main established diagnoses (43%) followed by digestive (10.1%), locomotive (8.9%) cardiovascular affections (8.7%) and skin diseases (8.4%). These five affections constituted alone about 80% of the total.
authors.affiliation: Département de Médecine Communautaire, Faculté de Médecine de Sousse, Tunisie. ridhagataa@yahoo.com
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gataa
authors.forename: T Nabli
authors.initials: TN
authors.lastname: Ajmi
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bougmiza
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mtiraoui
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004066:Digestive System Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D020233:Gait Disorders, Neurologic / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008297:Male; D010361:Patients / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010820:Physicians / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D012040:Regional Health Planning / Q000592:standards*; D012871:Skin Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology; D014416:Tunisia / Q000453:epidemiology; D055815:Young Adult