Awareness of causes of constipation in children among parents in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Background: Constipation among children is a common problem. There are two different types of constipation among children as follows: organic and functional. Functional constipation is caused by a low fiber diet and behavioral problems. Parents should have enough awareness about childhood constipation to manage it effectively. The present study aimes to assess the awareness of parents about the causes of constipation among their children in Saudi Arabia. Methods: The study was cross-sectional and conducted on parents through an electronic questionnaire between the period from January to April. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences IBM version 22 was used to analyze the collected data. Results: The current study included 366 parents with a dominant age range of 18-35 years old (45.6%). More than 50% of parents knew the causes of children’s constipation, and the most reported reason was decreased water intake (91.5%). There were 3% and 1.4% of parents who had poor and the best attitude, respectively. There were 1.4%, and 11.5% of parents with poor and the best behavior, respectively. The mean of knowledge was significantly affected by sex (p = 0.0001), nationality (p = 0.009), and the number of children (p = 0.0001). The attitude wasn’t affected by any demographics, whereas the behavior was affected significantly by sex only (p = 0.0001). Conclusion: There was a moderate level of parents’ knowledge about the cause of constipation among children and poor attitude with good behavior.