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Nocturnal enuresis in Children in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
Acta Pediatrica, 08/16/2012
Aloni MN et al. – In Kinshasa, the prevalence of nocturnal enuresis was high to those reported in Asian and Western countries. Nocturnal enuresis remains an important clinical problem in children but only a small percentage of parents seek medical help.
Methods- In all, 506 questionnaires were sent to parents of children aged 6–12 years randomly selected from four primary schools in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.
- The questionnaire was designed to collect information about prevalence and factors associated with nocturnal enuresis.
- A total of 415 (82.0%) were correctly completed. In this series, 109 children were identified as nocturnal enuresis in which 50 boys and 56 girls (p > 0.05).
- Factors associated with nocturnal enuresis were deep sleep, young age and familial history of enuresis (p < 0.05). Only 11% of patients have been consulted by doctors.
- Twelve children (11.0%) were treated by healers traditional. In the other part, 43 children (39.4%) were frequently punished by their parents.
- The common self-help strategies were 79 children (72.5%) were submitted to fluid restrictions before going to sleep and 68 (62.4%) were waking the child at night to void.
