Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Eyelid Surgeries among Surgeons in Nigeria

Aim: To determine the level of knowledge, attitude and practice of eyelid surgeries among surgeons in Nigeria.

Methods: A self-administered questionnaires about their knowledge, attitude and practice of eyelid surgeries were given to 135 medical practitioners attending the 49th Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference of the International College of Surgeons (Nigeria National Section) held in Port Harcourt from 16th to 20th June 2015. Questions asked tested the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of the medical practitioners on matters related to eyelid surgeries. Study participants’ knowledge, attitude and practice were graded as Good for scores of 75% and above, Fair for 50-74% score and Poor for scores less than 50%. Respondents’ demographic data, responses and corresponding scores were entered into computer software-Scientific Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 and analysed.

Results: There were 135 responders, out of which 121 (89.62%) were male while 14 (10.38%) were females. They were aged between 21-70 years with a mean value of 51.6 +/- 8.6 years, range = 40 years and mean = 50 years. Specialist surgeons with college fellowship accounted for 84.4% while specialist surgeons in training (college membership) accounted for 15.6%. Most of the responders (73.3%) were in public service while 9% were in the private service and 17.7% were in both public and private service. Sixty seven per cent of responders had good knowledge of eyelid surgeries, 22.2% had fair knowledge while 11.1% had poor knowledge. Majority (73.3%) had poor attitude while only 26.7% had good attitude to eyelid surgeries. Responders with poor practice of lid surgeries accounted for 77.8%, fair practice were 13.4% while only 8.8% had good eyelid surgery practice.

Conclusion: Most of our responders were experienced surgeons as shown by their ages, educational and professional status. Though majority of them had good knowledge of eyelid surgeries their attitude and practice of it were poor in spite of their experience in the field of surgery. This could be due to the paucity of oculoplastic surgeons in Nigeria. Measures should therefore be taking to improve on subspecialty training especially in oculoplastic surgery and collaborations should be encouraged amongst surgeons involved in facial surgeries.