Saudi Parents' Knowledge and Attitude towards Pediatric Organ Donation in Al-Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Background: Organ donation is a life-saving process of removing an organ or tissue surgically from one person (the organ donor) and placing it into another person (the recipient). As well as The demand for organ donation is increasing over time Thus, understanding the attitudes and beliefs associated with parental decision making improve the rate of transplantation.

Aims: To Evaluate the perception of Saudi parents towards pediatric organ donation, and to assess the role of cultural and religious beliefs in the parental decision-making regarding organ donation, and to discover the misconceptions leading to the refusal of organ donation.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Riyadh region from 1 July 2020 to 31 August 2020 among all Saudi parents aged 18-60 years in Riyadh at the kingdom of Saudi Arabia via an online questionnaire, the responses were Statistically analysis using R v 3.6.3. The mean ±standard deviation was used to summarize the distribution of continuous variables. Chi-square test of independence was used to assess the association between categorical variables. Linear regression was used to assess factors associated with knowledge regarding organ donation.

Results: Among 588, the majority of responses, female 91.5%, showed that better education was associated with knowing about organ donation in children, with 60.7% of respondents who completed university education reporting so compared to 49.6% of those who completed high school education or more minor. Socio-economic status showed a statistically significant association with knowledge score (B = 0.36, P < 0.05). Moreover, higher education level showed a statistically significant association with accepting organ donation from one’s child (OR = 1.77, P = 0.05), in contrast to age, gender, and the number of children were not associated with organ donation acceptance. Respondents who did not think organ donation was permissible in Islam were less likely to accept organ donation than respondents who believed it was permissible (OR = 0.05, P < 0.001). More than half of the respondents heard about organ donation for children after death. At the same time, less than half of the respondents knew the correct definition for brain death. Only 34.7% of respondents knew that organ donation is allowed starting from birth. Most respondents knew about the possible organs to donate except for the lung. In addition, 45% of the respondents are either agreed or strongly agreed to discuss organ donation with their partner if they faced child loss.

Conclusion: This study found a lack of knowledge regarding organ donation among parents and impressively shows that the parents are willing to discuss organ donation if they face child loss. There was an urgent need to introduce campaigns focussing on awareness of child organ donation, including the protocol used in Saudi Arabia, especially among low socioeconomic status and who do not know Islam permission.