Knowledge and attitude of saudi women towards the risk of exposure to radiation during pregnancy

Introduction: Women exposure to radiation during pregnancy can be really harmful to fetus. However a lot of women might not know this fact, especially the singles, new married ones who are about to become mothers. Aim: To assess the knowledge and attitude of the Saudi women towards the risk of exposure to radiation during pregnancy. Methods: Randomly distributed electronically made questionnaire during the summer of 2016 to Saudi females. All data were electronically collected within 2 month time of distribution and then analyzed using SPSS (The Statistical Package for Social Sciences) version 16.0 software. Results: In total a 519 questionnaire was distributed across five regions of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia of which 510/519 (98.3%) responded. Around 82.2% of the women responded were between the age of 18-40 years and 69.4% of the women were married. 87.8% of women involved had previous knowledge about the health hazards of exposure to radiation during pregnancy. In the group of women who were aware of the risk, it was clear that occupation is the major factor that contributed in their awareness while being a governmental worker improves this awareness significantly (p-value>0.05). There were no significant differences in the knowledge between the regions although around 39% of the study population was from the west part of the country. In all 12.2 % (62/510) of the women did not know that exposure to radiation will put any risk on the fetus if they were exposed. Conclusion: Although the majority of the women involved in the study had awareness of the risk of infection, small group were an aware of that risk. The study clearly indicates that there is a need of more awareness campaigns in the community to increase the knowledge and attitude towards exposure to radiology and decrease the associated risk and complications.