The Awareness of The Risk of Chronic Use of Steroid Causing Cataract in Tabuke City, Saudi Arabia, 2017.

Background: Cataracts could result in very dangerous consequences including worldwide blindness which imposes a great economic burden on people and health authorities. Objectives: Evaluate the knowledge of Saudi subjects in Tabuk City toward the cataract induced by chronic use of steroids. Methods: It is a cross sectional community survey based on a questionnaire sheet that was carried out among sample of adult subjects from different shopping malls, community pharmacists, coffees and masjids of Tabuk City from July to September 2017. Results: All the subjects have already heard about cataract and only 6.4% of them suffered from cataract. The most common source of knowledge among participants were relatives and friend (75.1%). Only 9.1% of the subjects used steroid therapy for long periods as 59.4% of them used topical steroids, followed by 20.3% by oral therapy. Most of the subjects (81.4%) showed inadequate knowledge about the steroid induced cataract. The older age had significant association with good knowledge. Conclusion: The level of knowledge about risks factors of chronic usage of steroid therapy and its effects on cataract was inadequate among most of the subjects, although they were university graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]