Abstract

Aim: Knowledge, attitude and practices of parents of children who suffer febrile convulsions are limited leading to unnecessary anxiety and apprehension.

Settings and Design: Prospective questionnaire based study in a tertiary care centre carried over a period of one year.

Subjects and Methods: 32 parents of consecutive children presenting with febrile convulsion were enrolled.

Statistical Analysis Used: Chi-square test.

Results: 23 parents (71.9%) could not recognise the convulsion; 87.5% (28) did not carry out any intervention prior to getting the child to the hospital. The commonest immediate effect of the convulsion on the parents was fear of death (n= 25, 78.1%) followed by fear of future development of epilepsy (n= 21, 65%), fear of recurrence (n=20, 62.5%) and fear of brain damage (n=14, 43.75%). Before the onset of seizure, only 3 parents (9.3%) knew that high grade fever can cause seizure in children and the remaining 29 (91%) were unaware of any such relationship between fever and seizure onset. Predominant long term concerns of parents included fear of future development of epilepsy (n=21, 65%), fear of recurrence (n=20, 62.5%) and fear of brain damage (n=14, 43.75%). On enquiring further, 23 (72%) parents were not worried about their other unaffected child, remaining 9(28%) were worried mostly about occurrence of epilepsy in healthy sibling of the affected child. Of the total of 32 parents interviewed, 28(87.5%) did not have any thermometer at home. Amongst the remaining 5 (12.5%) who were having thermometer, only 3 knew how to use it properly. Only 1 parent knew how to measure temperature by axillary method and remaining 2 were using temperature by oral placement of thermometer. None of the parents knew about normal temperature.

Conclusions: The parental fear of fever and febrile convulsion is a major problem with serious negative consequences affecting daily familial life.