Parental perception and ideas about the childhood asthma

Bronchial asthma is defined as a chronic inflammatory process of the airway that causes a simultaneous increase in airway hyperactivity that leads to recurrent attacks of noisy breathing, breathlessness, chest tightness and coughing, particularly at night or in the early morning. The survey aims to study parents’, ideas and perceptions about their children’s asthma. This study was conducted by direct interviewing of 150 parents of asthmatic children with a cross-sectional study on asthmatic children aged 1–14 years who were attending outpatient departments, hospital wards and private clinics from the 1 September 2019 to 1 July 2020 at Basrah city, Iraq. The questionnaire included a review of parents,’ beliefs on the aetiology, naming and trigger factors of their children’s asthma. Another part of the questions was regarding the usage of long-term asthma medications and phobia regarding their side effects. Findings from this study revealed that most parents could not identify asthma by its name because only 39 (26%) of them named the disease as asthma; 94 (62.7%) parents called the disease allergic bronchitis. The aetiology of childhood asthma was considered to be hereditary by most parents, i.e. 108 (72%), and the main trigger factor mentioned by parents for acute exacerbation of asthma was respiratory tract infections [115 (76.7%)]. Only 47% of the patients were using long-term asthma medications, with parents, concern on drug safety was specified by 48 (31.9%) of them as phobia regarding drug addiction [20 (13.3%)], phobia regarding palpitation by 13 (8.6%), and remaining 15 (10%) had phobia regarding growth failure effect from steroids. Most of the parents had misperceptions and inadequate information about the pathogenesis and the aetiology of childhood asthma. There were a significant number of parents who had a concern about childhood asthma drug safety.