An Evaluation for a Population in the Middle East for General Awareness of the Benefits and Hazards of Different Types of Radiation

Many people lack awareness and good knowledge about radiation and its uses in medicine as it has been figured out that significant segments of the public society have a wrong idea and abnormal fear from unwarranted irradiation. For these reasons, a population in the Middle East was surveyed by means of a short questionnaire that was designed to assess the level of general knowledge of radiation and focus on the most important reasons behind their fear from dealing with radiation in order to improve their point of view about medical diagnostic and therapeutic radiology alike. The questionnaire is built upon the foundations and rules of scientific court as it was divided into two essential specialized classifications to describe different criteria, apart from other personal questions, and survey the objectives of the questionnaire to a specific sample. This questionnaire was distributed among native Arabic-speaking people only in the Arab world at the age of 18 years old at least. Finally, the sample was collected randomly as the percentage of females was 74% while the percentage of males was about 26% and then applied the appropriate statistical analyses to compare the results.
The findings of the study showed that there is a variation in the concept of radiation and its effects in the population that was surveyed. It was mostly 80% with the conviction that the concept of radiation is related directly to the medical diagnosis only. As for the radiation risks, 70% of them thought that radiation damages diverse depending on the type of radiation and the nature of which was not anticipated at the beginning of the study. On the other hand, the results of the evaluation and the study of how knowledge of the types and uses of radiation in medicine showed that 85% has good knowledge in the following areas: X-ray, Computed Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Ultrasound (US), while 15% of them only has a good knowledge in the following areas: Fluoroscopy and Angiography.
Despite these results, 80% of people are reluctant to allow their families to study or work in the field of radiology as most of them fear from the exposure to radiation or handling with it in order to avoid any future genetic mutations to their children themselves or other diseases including cancer.
In conclusion, the outcome of this survey underscores the need for awareness and knowledge in most areas of radiation sciences and its applications as well as making them aware of the consequences. To achieve this, there must be some training and educational workshops to the public in order to make them aware of the various areas of radiology, uses, and methods of prevention; in addition to relentless visits to the centers & institutions specialized in the areas of radiation sciences.