Standardized education and parental awareness are lacking for testicular torsion.

Summary Introduction Testicular torsion leads to orchiectomy in 30–50% of cases, which may cause psychological upset and parental guilt over a potentially avertable outcome. Presentation delay is an important modifiable cause of orchiectomy; yet, families are not routinely educated about torsion or its urgency. The present study assessed parental knowledge regarding acute scrotal pain. Materials and methods An anonymous survey was distributed to parents in Urology and ENT offices, asking about their children's gender and scrotal pain history, urgency of response to a child's acute scrotal pain, and familiarity with testicular torsion. Results Surveys of 479 urology and 59 ENT parents were analyzed. The results between the two were not statistically different. Among the urology parents, 34% had heard of testicular twisting/torsion, most commonly through friends, relatives or knowing someone with torsion (35%); only 17% were informed by pediatricians (Summary Figure). Parents presenting for a child's scrotal pain were significantly more likely to have heard of torsion (69%) than those presenting for other reasons (30%, OR 5.24, P Discussion This was the first study to assess parental knowledge of the emergent nature of acute scrotal pain in a non-urgent setting, and most closely approximating their level of knowledge at the time of pain onset. It also assessed parents' hypothetical responses to the scenario, which was markedly different than documented presentation times, highlighting a potential area for improvement in presentation times. Potential limitations included lack of respondent demographic data, potential sampling bias of a population with greater healthcare knowledge or involvement, and assessment of parents only. Conclusions Parental knowledge of testicular torsion was lacking, suggesting both ineffective education in the well-child setting and inappropriately timed education during or after pain occurrence. Awareness was most commonly anecdotal or taught unreliably, as even familiar parents were no more likely to seek emergent attention. Therefore, standardized, effective parental education on testicular torsion and the need for prompt presentation is needed, as is improvement in the quality of information taught in the healthcare setting. Further assessment of knowledge among preadolescent and adolescent boys regarding testicular torsion is warranted. It is hopeful that pre-hospital delay may be minimized and greater rates of testicular salvageability may be achieved through these efforts. Download : Download high-res image (380KB) Download : Download full-size image Summary Figure . Knowledge of testicular torsion among parents and their sources of knowledge. Percentages are among only those who knew about torsion and not of the total respondents. Roughly a third of parents had heard of testicular torsion. Among them, the most common source of knowledge was a friend or relative, i.e. “word of mouth.” In contrast, traditional sources of health education (i.e. Pediatricians, schools) were infrequent sources of testicular torsion knowledge, seen among 17.1% and 1.8% in this group, respectively, and 5.8% and 0.6% of parents overall.