Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Research has demonstrated that knowledge about medications, diet, exercise, home glucose monitoring, foot care, and treatment modifications is necessary to effectively self-manage diabetes, and the assessment of diabetes-related knowledge is an important first step from which to individualize diabetes education programs and make evaluations of their effectiveness.

Purpose: To assess the knowledge of diabetes mellitus (about the disease, its risk factors, signs/symptoms, related complications and suitable diet and lifestyle) among our type 2 diabetic patients and to identify knowledge deficits and patient specific features that are associated with this knowledge.

Material and methods: A cross-sectional sample survey of patients’ knowledge of diabetes was carried out by administering a 23-item diabetes knowledge questionnaire adapted to Spanish language to collect information. A total of 90 type 2 diabetic patients, mean age 62.1 (11.7 S.D.) attending our clinic during 4 months were interviewed.

We collected data about age, sex, time of evolution, chronic complications, treatment, cardiovascular risk factors, comorbidities, anthropometric (weight, BMI, waist perimeter) and analytic parameters.

Results: Ninety patients were evaluated, mean age 62.1±11.7 years, 57.1% men. Mean duration of the diabetes was 12±8.66 years, with mean time of attendance in our Endocrinology Department 3.45±3.47 years. 35.7% presented chronic complications disease-related; HTA was present in 70% of the patients, obesity in 73% and dyslipemia in 83.3%. Thirty percent of the patients were treated with oral hypoglycemic agents (OHA), 10% were insulin treated and 60% with combined treatment (insulin plus OHA).Mean BMI was 33.8±4.8, and mean HbA1c 7.55±1.05%. 51.9% of the patients answered correctly more than 75% of the questions and 48.1% of the patients more than 50%. None of the patients answered correctly <50%. The number of right answers was statistically significant regarding age (mean 58.8±12.9 years in more than 75% of right answers vs 65.1±10.1 years in 50–75% of right answers, P 0.05), but there were no significant differences depending on years of evolution (12.7±10.2 vs 10.3±6.3), BMI (33.5±5.5 vs 33.7±4.9), HbA1c (7.4±1.2 vs 7.8±0.7%) or time of endocrinology clinic attendance (4±4.1 vs 2.7±2.5 years). There were also no statistically significant differences depending on sex, chronic complications or previous educational programms. Insulin treated patients answered correctly more questions (more than 75% of right questions) than patients treated with OHA (100% in insulin treated patients vs 41.2% en patients treated with OHA P 0.026).

Conclusions: In our group of DM2 patients, we can conclude that most of them had appropriate diabetes related Kwowledge. Patients with better scores had less mean age, and were treated with insulin.

Priority needs to be given by education programmes to give patients a better knowledge of their disease, to prevent premature morbidity and mortality associated with diabetes.