ABSTRACT

Background: Decisions in difficult situations may lead to a regret and one of the scales to assess this regret is Decisional Regret Scale (DRS).

Aim: To determine the regret of parents whose sons had undergone repair of distal hypospadias using DRS.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at Pediatric Surgery Department, Rawalpindi Medical University, Rawalpindi over a period of 4 years. All parents whose sons had undergone distal hypospadias repair with age <12 years from January, 2016 to December, 2019 were included. They were contacted and questions of DRS were asked on a 5-point Likert scale. Their responses were recorded and total DRS score was calculated. All data was analyzed using SPSS version 26.

Results: A total of 91 patient’s details were retrieved, however, 50 patients were included into this study. The mean age was found to 6.48 (3.96) years. Twenty eight percent patients had some complication, most frequent (18%) of them was a fistula, followed by meatal stenosis (6%) and wound infection (4%).Twenty-seven (54%) patients were having regret, 13 (26%) had moderate to severe regret and 14 parents (28%) had mild regret. Following chi-square test, non-educated mothers (P=0.073), vaginal route of delivery of child (P-0.015), development of complications following surgery (p=0.001) and sad or grieved feelings following surgery (p=0.000) were found to be important factors leading to worsening DRS score. Finally, OR was calculated and most predictive factors for sever DRS included non-educated mothers [OR(95%CI) 2.953(0.769-11.340)], vaginal route of delivery [OR(95%CI) 3.667(0.763-17.619)], anomaly in another sibling [OR(95%CI) 2.06(0.303-13.971)] and development of complications following surgery [OR(95%CI) 21.333(0.240-4.918)].

Conclusion: DRS was quite frequent among parents following hypospadias repair of their sons. Among significant factors, most were related to family dynamics and only significant surgery related factor was development of complication. So as surgeons, we need to reduce our complication rate so that DRS may be lowered in these parents.

Keywords:Decision making; Clinical decision making; Shared decision making; Hypospadias