Knowledge and Practices Toward Routine Medical Checkup Among Middle-Aged and Elderly People of Riyadh

Abstract

Introduction: Routine checkup is a form of preventive medicine, it’s a helpful practice to promote health in the community. Studying the prevalence of routine checkup, awareness, influencing, and preventing factors for it in our community will be a helpful tool for the health authorities to promote among individuals. Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted in different locations of Riyadh using a convenience sampling technique, with sample size of 414 Saudi participants of both genders aged 36 years old and above. The data were collected through self-administered structured questionnaire with demographic variables, frequency of routine medical checkup, knowledge questions, factors that enhance or prevent individual to do routine checkup and best way to spread the awareness. Results: Two hundred eighty-eight (69.57%) participants knew well about routine checkup and 142 (34.3%) of them do routine medical checkup. “Lack of time” and “Laziness” were reported as the 2 most common preventing factors (46% and 45.2%), respectively, and most common reason that influenced their practice was “health concern” (77.5%) followed by “worry about chronic or serious illness” (32.4%). Participants believed that social networks (eg, twitter, Facebook, etc) and media (eg, TV, radio) are most effective ways to spread awareness of it in the community (53.86% and 52.89%, respectively). Conclusion: There was high level of knowledge on routine health checkup, but a low prevalence was observed in practice. Hence, more health initiatives should be taken for routine medical screening in the Saudi community.

Routine Medical Check-Up and Self-Treatment Practices among Community-Dwelling Living in a Mountainous Area of Northern Vietnam

“…Routine medical check-up plays an essential role in health care. A routine medical check-up can be defined as “a routine health-care process usually done by health-care facilities for both genders and for all age groups at different periods according to the patient risk factors” [ 16 ]. Globally, the frequency of routine medical check-ups varies from country to country.…”

“…In Germany, the percentage of periodic health examinations is 50.8% for men and 49.8% for women [ 17 ]. Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, only 34.3% of middle-aged and older adults have routine medical check-ups [ 16 ]. In Japan, the proportion of people aged 48 and over with routine medical check-ups is 38.4% [ 18 ].…”

Decomposing socio-economic inequality for routine medical check-ups among older adults in India

“…Previous studies have confirmed the positive association between education and routine medical check-up among older adults [36], [37]. Education enhances knowledge about the importance of routine health check-ups, which further brings a positive change in attitude and practice of routine medical check-ups among older adults [28]. Results profoundly concluded that older adults with chronic diseases were around 7.7 times more likely to opt for a routine medical check-up than their counterparts.…”

“…Previously, studies have examined health-seeking behavior among older adults in combination with various ageingrelated diseases [23]- [25]. We were able to find a few studies examining medical check-ups among people in other countries, not specifically older adults and routine medical check-ups [22], [26]- [28]; however, we were unable to find any study in Indian context examining the prevalence and factors associated with routine medical check-up among older adults in India.…”

Development and Worsening of Diabetes Among Adults Aged Over 40 Years: A 6-Year Follow-Up Study of 140,000 People in Japan – The Shizuoka Study

“…Our study also found that people who underwent health check-ups annually were less likely to start using injection drugs. This nding may not necessarily demonstrate a causal relationship between health screening speci cally and diabetes incidence; it may be attributed to the fact that people who are more concerned about their health are more likely to undergo health check-ups more frequently [19]. However, previous studies have suggested that health check-ups might be useful in screening for lifestyle-related diseases to a certain extent [20][21][22], and it will continue to play a role in preventing the onset and worsening of diabetes if appropriate interventions are implemented.…”