Assessment of mothers knowledge, attitude and practice towards foreign body aspiration in young children attending well-baby clinic in al zaher primary health care center in makkah, Saudi Arabia, 2021

Introduction: The timing has a critical role as an early diagnosis and proper management of foreign body aspiration can decrease the occurrence of complication and mortality. But prevention is the best way to protect the child from injuries and the awareness is the first important step in prevention. The aim of this study is to assess knowledge and behavior of mothers regarding FBA and the determinants of this knowledge in order to increase their awareness. Methods: This is a cross sectional study included mothers attending Al-Zaher primary healthcare center in Makkah. Inclusion criteria were mothers speak Arabic, mothers of children who don’t have a serious or sever disease. Exclusion criteria were mothers cannot give informed consent or illiterate mothers.A self-administered questionnaire, that designed in the Arabic language and contained 14 Questions, were distributed to a random sample of the mothers. The descriptive statistics were calculated for qualitative variables. The questionnaire contains16 questions about knowledge were summed into a total score that ranges from 0 to 16 and then dichotomized into poor and good knowledge. Results: A total of 281 mothers participated in the study. Among them 87% were Saudi and 13 % were non-Saudiand about a third of the mothers were employed, were included in the study. Around two thirds of the mothers had bachelor or higher level of education whilst only 9.6% had less than high school education.About 30% of the included mothers had poor knowledge about foreign body aspiration.Healthcare providers were considered as the best source of information about FBA by 78.6% while social media was preferred by 16.4% of the mothers.Saudi nationality, young age, high education, and having first aid training were significantly associated with good knowledge about FBA. Conclusion: Knowledge about foreign body aspiration among mothers in Makkah was inadequate as about a third lack the essential knowledge about the problem that could be lethal.After adjustment of the confounding effect, nationality, age, and previous first aid training was significantly associated with knowledge about FBA.