Self-medication of patients with common cold among 15-45 year old individuals, Babol, 1998

Objective: Self-medication is one of the most important health problems, which could result in many complications in the community. The annual money expresses on drugs for self-medication is considerable. One of these instances is the common cold for which people consume antibiotics in addition to symptom allaying drugs. The present study was designed to find self-medication methods and their comparison between rural and urban societies in 1999. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study on 961 rural and urban persons in the second half of the 1998. A systematic clustered sampling was performed with 25 persons in every cluster. The subjects were 15-45 years old. The data were gathered by testified questionnaire and then entered to code sheets and then analyzed with X² statistic test. The P<0.05 was considered significant. Findings: The mean age was 28.8±9.4 years old. This study showed that 40.4% of the affected patients with common cold referred to physicians. The rate of reference of 31-45 year old individuals was higher than that for 15-30 year-old persons (42% vs. 39.1%). Also the relationship of patients’ reference and education was surveyed. 44.8% of the patients with under six year education, 38.5% with 6-12 year, 8% (41.3) with over 12 year education referred to physicians, that was in significant. The rural subjects referred to the physicians more than the urban population, (47% vs. 35.8%) that was significant (P<0.0005). 81.3% of those who didn’t refer to a medical center started self-medication plans with antibiotics with a range of 1-14 day a mean of 4±2 days, of course 54% of the patients referred to the physicians after their self-medication. As well as, there was significant relationship between education and self-medication (P