Upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) are the most common diseases treated in the primary health care centres in Kinta District, Perak. Thus, aretrospectiire study was undertaken to examine the documentation of the presentation of patients diagnosed with URTI and their antibiotic treatment at two health care centres in Kinta district, The randomly selected case notes of 700 patients documented the following symptoms, fever (43 .29%) , cough (68.14%) , no cough (24.43%), nasal symptoms (35 .29%) , sore throat (46.00%), headache (13 .57%) , bodyache (3 .57%) , earache (1 .86%) and gastrointestinal symptom (0, 14%) . Analysis of results using 'sore throat score' and isuggested appropriate management’ adopted from a study by Wawen et al. revealed poor correlation between diagnosis of URTI and the need for antibiotic therapy. Therefore, a clinical score for patients with sore throat can be introduced to overcome inappropriate prescription of antibiotics.
Klinik Kesihatan Gopeng, Klinik Kesihatan Malim Nawar, Kinta district, Perak, Malaysia