Lumbar Puncture in Saudi Arabia: Knowledge, Awareness, Acceptance and its Refusal Among Health Professionals

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Lumbar puncture (LP) is a standard technique to acquire cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for either diagnostic or therapeutic management of neurological disorders. This study assesses the awareness and level of acceptance of LP among medical laboratory students. The study also investigates the level of understanding of the purpose of performing LP and determines the acceptance rate among the study population.
 METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Taif, Saudi Arabia, using an online questionnaire distributed among medical laboratory students attending the College of Applied Medical Sciences at Taif University. Of over 200 questionnaires distributed, 176 students responded. The questionnaire queried students’ socio-demographic information, their knowledge, acceptance rate, and possible complications and precautions concerning LP. A univariate analysis was performed.
 RESULTS: The study showed that 81.8% of participants were aware of LP. About 53.6% of participants received their information from their education. The participants’ understanding of the side effects and precautions surrounding LP operations was significantly high at 87.5% and 72.7%, respectively. In all, 65.9% of participants reported their acceptance compared to 34.1% of participants who did not accept LP. In contrast, about 72.7% of participants preferred not to do LP, even if the LP was prescribed by their doctor.
 CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TRANSLATION: The study showed high knowledge of the purpose, process, and duration of the LP procedure among clinical laboratory students. The key reasons for the LP’s rejection in the majority of participants were fear of injection and side effects, including paralysis. This research demonstrated the need to raise awareness of LP using methods such as social media, academic seminars and training courses.
 Key words: Lumbar puncture; Cerebrospinal fluid; Taif; Saudi Arabia; Medical laboratory students.
 
 Copyright © 2020 Alrehaili. Published by Global Health and Education Projects, Inc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Knowledge about stem cell sources and obstacles in donation of bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cells: a cross-sectional survey from Ha’il city to track the prospects of regenerative medicine in Saudi Arabia

“…Although Saudi Arabia claims to be the first country in the Arab world to have more than 10,000 stem cell donors, it is currently underperforming in this domain as compared to European and other developed countries. According to available statistics, the rates of registered stem cell donors are just around one per cent in Saudi Arabia [ 3 ]. The underlying factors responsible for this scenario could be lack of awareness about basic facts such as sources of adult stem cells, procedures of adult stem cell retrieval, donation risks and outcomes and information about authorized local and international donor agencies etc.…”

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