Prevalence, Knowledge, and Awareness of Atypical Facial Pain among Adults in Saudi Population

Abstract

Atypical facial pain is a persistent orofacial pain that is difficult to identify and can be distinguished from trigeminal neuralgia. Symptoms of facial pain are often widespread and not specific, leading to misdiagnosis and ineffective or even harmful treatments from multiple medical specialties. Therefore, knowing the prevalence among Saudi population & early detection aids in successful intervention and treatments.

Objectives: This observational study aimed to investigate the prevalence of atypical facial pain among Adults Saudi population and their knowledge and awareness levels.

Methodology: A cross-sectional observational study was conducted through an online self-administrated questionnaire. A total of (at least) 384 participants were the sample size intent in this study. All statistical analysis will be done by using the "Microsoft Office Excel software” program and “IBM SPSS Statistics " version 20 program.

Results: Our study enrolled 594 participants, the majority fall within 20-30 age group, comprising 33.5%, also the sample is predominantly males accounting for 61.4% of the total respondents. It is evident from the data that the largest proportion of individuals, constituting 42.3% of the total, falls into the Low Knowledge and Awareness category. On the other hand, both the High Knowledge and Awareness and Intermediate Knowledge and Awareness categories each account for 28.8% of the total, indicating a relatively balanced distribution of individuals with varying levels of knowledge and awareness. All sociodemographic characteristics had no significant association with knowledge and awareness score of AFP.

Conclusion: Our results revealed that participants exhibited low knowledge and awareness score regarding AFP.