Knowledge, attitudes, and practice patterns of recurrent urinary stones prevention in Saudi Arabia

The purpose of this study is to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and practice patterns of urologists in Saudi Arabia regarding prevention of recurrent stone formation and how much they follow preventive stone disease management guidelines. A questionnaire about knowledge, attitudes, and practice patterns of urologists in Saudi Arabia regarding prevention of recurrent stone formation was used. The survey comprised three domains: knowledge, attitudes, and practice patterns. Data about gender, duration of experience and health care sector were also collected. Individual responses were recorded, tabulated and compared using descriptive statistics. The overall response rate was 38.8 %. All respondents were male urologists. Most of them (62, 71.3 %) had an experience of 5–20 years in management of stone disease patients and the majority (74, 85.1 %) belonged to the governmental health care sector. A total of 51 % of the respondents answered in concordance with the best practice guidelines in at least half of the questions and 40 % in all of the questions. Overall, practice patterns of 58 % of the respondents were in concordance with the best practice guidelines in all the questions except for the question of practices regarding stone analysis. As regards to attitude domain, a total of 58.7 % respondents expressed their agreement or strong agreement with the questions. Urologists’ knowledge of stone recurrence preventive programs is suboptimal. They do not apply effectively the best stone prevention practice guidelines in their daily practice as well. Efforts to increase knowledge and enforce its application in daily practice are strongly warranted.