Abstract:
Background: Elimination disorder occurs when a child aged five and above urinate urine or
aged four and above defecates feces in inappropriate locations voluntary or involuntary.
Pediatric elimination disorders are not well understood by parents, teachers, medical
professionals, and mental health practitioners. However, this problem is stressful for both
children and parents. Despite this, the magnitude and its associated factors of this problem are
rarely investigated in Ethiopia.
Objective: This study aimed at assessing the magnitude of elimination disorder and its associated
factors in children aged 5–14 years old.
Method: A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted from September 22 to November
22, 2022 at Wolaita Sodo University Comprehensive Specialized Hospital in Wolaita Sodo, South
Ethiopia. A systematic random sampling technique was employed to select 423 study subjects.
The data were gathered using a structured face-to-face interviewer administered questionnaire.
Development of symptom score for dysfunctional elimination syndrome tool of vancover
questionnaire was used to screen elimination disorders. Logistic regression model was used to
determine the association between the outcome and independent variables and the 95% CI odds
ratio and p-value < 0.05 were used to determine the strength of association between the outcome
variable and explanatory variables.
Result: Atotal of 417 children were included in this study with response rate of 98.6%. The
overall magnitude of elimination disorder among children age 5-14 year old in this syudy was (n
70, 16.8%), in boys (n 47, 17.3%) and girls (n 23, 15.75%). Specifically, the prevalence of
enuresis was (n 64, 15.3%), encopresis (n 15, 3.6%), both enuresis and encopresis or combined
elimination disorder (n 9, 2.2%). Age 9-11year (AOR=3.2;CI:1.09, 9.43), family size (AOR= 3.4;
CI:1.78, 6.56), family history of elimination disorder (AOR=3.9; CI:2.12, 7.45), emotional
problem (AOR=2.2; CI:1.18, 4.05), hyperactive problem (AOR= 3.8; CI:1.83, 7.83), child had
low toilet training skill (AOR=5.9; CI:2.61, 13.33) and bad parenting practices were poor
suprevesion (AOR=4.4; CI:1.29, 14.69) were significantliy associated with elimination disorder.
Conclusion and Recommendation: In this study, approxiametly one in five children had
elimination disorder and factors associated with elimination disorders are child age, large
family size, positive family history of elimination disorder, emotional and hyperactive problem,
bad parenting practices and low toilet traing skill. Therefore, wholestic approach, early detection
and management are important to referse the impact of the problem.
