The prevalence of parental self-medication practice in Volgograd

Abstract

The aim of the study is to study the prevalence, determinants, and reasons for parents using oral medications to treat their children in Volgograd (Russia). Materials and methods. An instant simultaneous cross-sectional anonymous survey of 390 mothers of children aged 1 to 14 years was conducted during October-March 2018-2019 in the city of Volgograd (Russia). Criteria for inclusion in the study: mothers of children older than 1 year. Exclusion criteria: other legal representatives of children (fathers, grandmothers, guardians, etc.); women with one child under the age of 1 year; mothers of children with chronic diseases; persons with medical education. The data obtained were analyzed using the STATISTICA-10 software package. To build models of logistic regression, the Student t-test was evaluated for independent samples (to assess the differences between the obtained data) and the χ2 criterion for the assessment of categorical differences. Results: it was found that 71.0% of mothers used the practice of self-medication of children, while its frequency depended only on the level of family income (χ2 = 7.077, p = 0.030) and did not depend on the age of the respondents (χ2 = 0.211, p = 0.976), education (χ2 = 2.626, p = 0.270), the number of children in the family (χ2 = 2.819, p = 0.421). Most often, antipyretic drugs (93.8%), decongestants (72.9%), antiallergic drugs (49.5%), enterosorbents (44.4%), immunomodulators (26.7%), antibiotics (7.9%) were used for self-medication. Using the logistic regression model, it was shown that the main determinant of self-medication in children is delayed treatment of parents for medical help (OR = 0.27, p <0.001). Conclusion. The high frequency of self-medication dictates the need for further research to understand this phenomenon.