Diabetes and diabetic retinopathy: the knowledge, attitude and practice among the type 2 diabetic patients of al ahsa district of saudi arabia: a cross sectional survey

Objective: To assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of diabetic patients towards diabetes and diabetic retinopathy.
Introduction: Diabetes self-management is a cornerstone of diabetes care. Different studies show lack of sufficient knowledge, positive attitude and good practice among diabetic patients about their disease and its complication due to illiteracy. Thus, before considering any possible intervention it was imperative to assess present knowledge, attitudes, and practices of patients towards the management of diabetes.
Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional primary health care based study was done in the district of Al Ahsa of Saudi Arabia from February 2017 to July 2017 through a structured interview with 2016 type 2 diabetes mellitus patients who were administereda 30-point, verbally administered previously validated questionnaire .Data collected was analyzed descriptively using SPSS version 21.
Results: Fifty one percent (N=1028) were male and forty nine percent (N=968) belonged to the rural area. Over all KAP score of the participants were in the satisfactory range i.e. 205 ± 22.37 (maximum, 300) .However some critical information on knowledge was lacking since more than sixty eight percent (N= 1381) of the participant believed that diabetes is caused by excessive use of sugar and chocolate .Likewise more than sixty four percent of the participants (N=1299) agreed that eating dates does not affect the diabetes. Some negative attitude and little wrong practice were detected in this study. The attitude of seventy seven percent of the participant (N=1430) towards annual eye exam was negative as they think that good ocular vision do not require eye examination. As far as practice is concerned more than sixty two percent of the participants (N= 1256) did not practice regular outdoor activities such as exercise. The mean of the overall KAP score for all the respondents was 205 ± 22.37 (maximum, 300).Thirty three percent of patients had poor knowledge of diabetes and the same number of the patients had negative attitudes towards having the disease and thirty two percent of the patents had poor practice towards the management of diabetes. The mean overall KAP score for male patients (210 ± 22.43, P = 0.000) was higher than that of the female patients (202 ± 23.9, P = 0.000). The same was true with rural patients whose KAP score was 220 ±22.32, P = 0.007, as compared with the urban patients with an overall score of 202 ± 21.32, P = 0.007.
Conclusions: This study showed interesting information regarding the knowledge, attitude and practice of the patients towards diabetes and diabetic retinopathy. There are some critical knowledge, attitude and practice gap which needs to be addressed.