Abstract

Background: Febrile convulsions present some of the scariest seizure experiences to parents, especially since they mostly occur to children aged around 20-month old. The entirety of the seizures is accompanied by panic and lack of knowledge of what to do with silent prayers that nothing serious happens to the child. This study aims to assess the knowledge and attitudes of febrile convulsions in a cross-sectional descriptive study. Methodology: The study design was a cross-sectional study carried out among the adult population in Saudi Arabia to assess the knowledge attitude and practice of febrile convulsions among parents. The total enumeration method was used to include the adult male and female who volunteered to take part in the study via questionnaires, whereas analysis was carried out using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Results: About 90% were female, and the rest were males. Hence, there was an approximately even distribution of the ages represented by the group, where respondents aged below 30 years were 35.8%, those between 30 and 45 were 32.1%, and those above 45 years were 32.1%. About 61.8% (809 of 1309) of the respondents knew what febrile convulsions were, whereas more than half (53.7%) of the respondents correctly identified the causes of febrile convulsions as fever episodes and child's age. Only 13% of the 766 knew that febrile convulsions could be stopped by bringing down the child's temperature, whereas the father's education level was not associated with the knowledge of febrile convulsions (p = 0.198). Conclusions: Knowledge of what to do in the case of encountering febrile convulsions remains equally low despite a large percentage of respondents said that they know about febrile convulsions.

Key words: Convulsions, febrile, parents, knowledge, attitude, Saudi Arabia.