Abstract

Pharyngitis is an inflammation or irritation of the pharynx or palatine tonsil. The etiology is usually viruses which cause the majority of the pharyngitis but most bacterial cases are attributed to group A Streptococci (GAS). This study aimed to identify the frequency of bacterial pharyngitis especially GAS of children, according to epidemiological factors. Symptoms present and signs for each patient were recorded, following which a throat swab was collected. There were 237 cases of  children aged between 1 and 14 years with inflammation; out of 394 cases that visited the ENT primary care at  Souk Al-Kameess during the 12 months study period. From the incidence of 394 sore throat cases,  GAS was observed in 237 cases (60.15%). Of these 110 (46.41%) were girls and 127 (53.59%) were boys. A higher proportion of children were found with GAS pharyngitis aged 5-9 and the lowest incidence of sore throat occurrence was 3-4 years. The highest incidence of children pharyngitis was recorded in January (Winter) and September (Autmn). The following factors showed independent positive correlation with GAS sore throat infection; patients visiting, months, year season, tonsillectomy, culture result, catalase test result and bacitracin test result with significant value of P<0.01, whereas sex, age and gram stain results with P˃ 0.01. In conclusion, the results of this study found that cases of bacterial sore throat were higher than non-bacterial sore throat. The main cause of bacterial pharyngitis was GAS. Therefore, this study suggested that the use of the effectiveness of antibiotics and recommended anti-bacterial pharyngitis therapy to prevent initial rheumatic fever and its complications.

Key words: Pharyngitis, tonsillitis, epidemiological factors, Streptococcus, children.