Abstract
Background: Kidney diseases among children are serious health issues which have fatal future drawbacks on their health. Public awareness about the kidney problems among children is the main pillar for proper and effective management.
Aim: To evaluate Saudi parents' awareness and attitude about the children's kidneys health problems in three big Saudi cities.
Methods: The current study is a questionnaire-based cross sectional study, included a random sample of Saudi parents from three big cities (Riyadh, Tabouk and Arar). The questionnaire's question covered demographic data, awareness, and attitude about the pediatric nephrology.
Results: The questionnaire was completed by 1489 parents. Sufficient knowledge was shown in 1195 (80.3%) participants about the pediatric kidney problems. The multivariate regression analysis showed that ages, employment and level of education had significant effect (p=0.006, <0.0001, 0.003, and 0.001 respectively) on the knowledge scores. Around 95% of participants thought that pediatric kidney diseases are serious health problems. Participants revealed that hematuria (88.9%) was the most stressing symptoms of pediatric kidney manifestations. Family and friends' experience was the most common sources of participants' knowledge (57.4%).
Conclusions: The current study had showed generally accepted level of awareness among Saudi parents about the kidney problems among children. Greater efforts should be planned by the healthcare provider to give a better correct knowledge to the public.