Abstract
Background: Smoking is a chief cause of inevitable death and disability. It is considered a risk factor for prospect fracture by decreasing bone density and has deleterious consequences on bone quality.
Objectives: The aims of this study were to determine the prevalence of tobacco smoking and assess the awareness of musculoskeletal effects of smoking among undergraduate medical and health science students at Makkah region, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).
Method: A cross-sectional study was performed, using a questionnaire on a randomly selected number ofstudents at Makkah region medical colleges in KSA. Data analysis was performed by a statistical team using SPSS program (version 16). The means and standard deviations of normally distributed variables were compared using paired t tests and for categorical variables, the X2 test was used. The p-value of less than 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.
Results: We had 370 participants, 56.6% female, and 31.3% male. Smoking prevalence among medical students reached 71.1% smokers, 39.3% smokers for more than 4 years while 60.7% smoked for less than 4 years and 28.9% did not smoke. 64.1% of medical students believe that smoking will affect bone health, while 13.2% did not believe and 22.7% did not know that there is any relationship.
Conclusion: This study identified that prevalence of smoking among undergraduate medical students at Makkah region is higher than previous reports in KSA. There is a crucial need to endorse multi-disciplinary health education events at different age groups to prevent adolescent students smoking, and to support smoking cessation programs.