Assessment of Parents' Awareness About Their Child's Congenital Heart Disease

Objectives: Parents with children suffering from congenital heart disease (CHD) faced with a severe emotional crisis. This study was conducted based on the idea that the more knowledgeable the parents are about such diseases, the more they can cooperate with the physician in the child's treatment process. Materials and Methods: Given the aim of the study, parents' information of 104 children who were referred to the outpatient clinic was collected by a questionnaire. The instrument contained five questions regarding the awareness of the name of the child's heart disease, the ability to indicate the location of the disease on a schematic image of the heart, the knowledge of the symptoms of the heart disease, the awareness of the causes of CHD, and the importance of children's oral hygiene. Results: Children's mean age was 4.8 +/- 4.3 years. Based on the results, there was a significant association between parents' education arid the above-mentioned parameters except for the importance of children's oral hygiene (p<0.05). Conclusions: In this study, parents' information about their children's heart disease was largely incomplete which was generally attributed to the parents' level of education. Currently, it seems that the probable explanations provided by physicians about children's illnesses play no effective role in creating the awareness of parents, especially those with lower levels of education.