Copyright
©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Pediatr. Feb 8, 2018; 7(1): 56-61
Published online Feb 8, 2018. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v7.i1.56
Published online Feb 8, 2018. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v7.i1.56
Pediatricians lack knowledge for the diagnosis and management of functional constipation in children over 6 mo of age
Ariani Widodo, Badriul Hegar, Department of Child Health, Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta 10430, Indonesia
Yvan Vandenplas, Department of Pediatrics, UZ Brussel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Larbeeeklan, Brussels 1090, Belgium
Author contributions: Widodo A and Hegar B developed the questionnaire and collected and analysed the data of the research; Widodo A and Vandenplas Y wrote the manuscript, which was corrected and approved by Hegar B.
Institutional review board statement: The Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta approved the study protocol.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors report no potential conflict of interest related to this manuscript.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Yvan Vandenplas, MD, PhD, Department of Pediatrics, UZ Brussels, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Laarbeeklaan 101, Brussels 1090, Belgium. yvan.vandenplas@uzbrussel.be
Telephone: +32-2-4775794 Fax: +32-2-4775783
Received: December 30, 2016
Peer-review started: January 4, 2017
First decision: March 13, 2017
Revised: August 3, 2017
Accepted: December 4, 2017
Article in press: December 4, 2017
Published online: February 8, 2018
Peer-review started: January 4, 2017
First decision: March 13, 2017
Revised: August 3, 2017
Accepted: December 4, 2017
Article in press: December 4, 2017
Published online: February 8, 2018
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Background
Criteria for the diagnosis and management of functional constipation are not well known by general pediatricians and primary health care, despite published guidelines.
Research frontiers
Our research was limited to one country.
Innovations and breakthrough
This research confirms the frequency of childhood constipation. Knowledge of primary health care physicians on the diagnosis and management is limited. Published guidelines are insufficiently disseminated.
Applications
It is likely that these findings can be extrapolated to the rest of the world, since similar data are reported for the United States and Indonesia.
Terminology
Childhood constipation, electronic questionnaire, primary healthcare, guidelines, laxative.