The Level of Public Awareness About Clubfoot in The Al-Qassim Region and Importance of Early Childhood Intervention: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Clubfoot is a childhood congenital abnormality that can lead to disabilities, which can last a lifetime if untreated. There are several types of interventions to treat this condition. However, these interventions depend on the age of presentation and result in good outcomes if started early. This study aimed to investigate the level of public awareness about clubfoot in the Al-Qassim region in Saudi Arabia. Method: This observational cross-sectional study was conducted on a population living in the Al-Qassim region in 2020. The study was conducted using a structured, validated questionnaire that was available online. The chi-square test and t-test were used to analyze the data. All the analyses were conducted using SPSS (version 21). Results: This study included 7085 individuals from the Al-Qassim region. The level of public awareness was as follows 15.6% had poor knowledge, 43.8% had fair knowledge, and 40.6% had high knowledge. The most common sources of knowledge were relatives and friends (42.55%) and websites (29.83%). A multivariate analysis showed that several factors affected the levels of knowledge, including gender (P˂0.0001), having an affected child (P˂0.0003), certain sources of information, affected persons (P˂0.005), relatives and friends (P˂0.0001), websites (P˂0.0001), and printed media (P˂0.0001). Conclusion: A moderate level of knowledge was found among the population in the Al-Qassim region. Their knowledge level was affected by several factors, such as the source of information. Therefore, educational interventions, such as campaigns, are needed to improve the awareness level, leading to better outcomes. Keywords: Clubfoot, Awareness, General population, Al-Qassim, Serial casting, misconception, Early Interventions

Community Awareness of Congenital Talipes Equinovarus (Clubfoot) in Makkah Region, Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…In addition, participants who said the best time for initial treatment of CTEV is from birth to six months tend to have a higher awareness level than others about CTEV (p-value=0.001). The previously mentioned associations were found to be consistent with the findings of the parallel study in which gender and having an affected child were found to be significantly associated with awareness about CTEV [19]. Age and marital status were not found to be significantly associated with awareness about CTEV.…”

“…The most reported source of information about CTEV was websites and the internet as stated by less than one-third (27%) of the participants followed by social media which was reported by (23.3%) of the participants, then relatives and friends as mentioned by (20.7%) of the participants and others and this was found to be similar to the findings of the congruent study except for that relatives and friends were the most reported source of information about CTEV followed by websites [19]. Physiotherapy was one of the most reported treatment options when asked about recovery rates for CTEV; however, 13.2% of participants reported recovery rates of 61%-80% after physiotherapy, while 54.2% are unaware of the exact recovery rates after physiotherapy.…”

Assessment of Mothers’ Knowledge regarding Care of their Children Undergoing Congenital Club-Foot Surgery

“…Concerning medical history of the siblings the present study showed that, more than three quarter of the studied children had no siblings history. This may be due to less than two thirds of studied children were first ranking and there is a 10% chance of a subsequent child being affected if the parents already have a child with a clubfoot [25].This finding matches with [37] who conduct study about -The level of public awareness about clubfoot in the al-qassim region and importance of early childhood intervention: a crosssectional study‖ and found that majority of the studied children had no medical history of the siblings.…”