**1. Introduction**

Proton pump inhibitors (PPI) constitute a very effective and used treatment at present [1–3]. Previously, they would seem to cause undesirable effects and medicinal interactions probably

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

serious and badly known, especially for the elderly person often fragile and exposed to a polypharmacy [4]. On the other hand, it is a very expensive therapeutic class and frequently used in an inappropriate way [2–4]. In Tunisia, the use of these medicines to the old subject, in the public structures, by specialists, was not studied. So, we have led this study to realize an evaluation of the professional practices concerning the prescription of these molecules, by gastroenterologists, in a teaching hospital (CHU) of the Tunisian South, to the geriatric population.

The objectives of our study were:

