Level of awareness on diabetes, its complications and medications among diabetic patients attending King Faisal Hospital inTaif city: A cross-sectional study

Background:- Several challenges in diabetes management need to be tackled in Saudi Arabia, including the growing prevalence, particularly among children and young adults, micro-and macrovascular complications, lifestyle changes, late diagnosis, poor awareness and high treatment costs. Objectives: To assess the level of awareness on diabetes, its complications and medications among diabetic patients in Taif City. Subjects and methods:- This is a cross-sectional study carried out among a convenient sample of 100 diabetic patients of both genders and aged over 30 years attended diabetic clinics, King Faisal Hospital in Taif City. Data were collected using a valid questionnaire contained question about socio-demographic characteristics of the patients, questions on patient’s diabetic characteristics and 15 questions inquing about patients` knowledge regarding diabetes.In addition last level of HbA1c has been obtained from patients` medical files. Results:- One hundred patients with type 2 diabetes were recruited for the study. Forty percent of them were in the age group of ?60 years. Half of them were females. Insufficient knowledge regarding diabetes was reported among 61% of the diabetics. However, among those treated with insulin, 93.1% stored it in the fridge and 41.4% reported changeable sites for insulin injection as shown in figure 2. Majority of diabetic patients were aware about diabetes risk factors (95%). On the other hand, only 9% of patients were aware of the diabetic complications and almost one third of them were aware of the normal level of blood glucose (31%), normal level of blood glucose during fasting (35%) and two hours after meal (38%). University graduated patients were more significantly had higher sufficient knowledge of diabetes than illiterates (62.9% versus 20.6%), p=0.013. Working patients were more knowledgeable than not working patients (61.9% versus 24.4%), p=0.011. Duration of diabetes was a significant predictor for having sufficient awareness and knowledge about the disease as 47.9% of those whose duration of diabetes exceeded 10 years compared to none of those with less than two years of diabetes had sufficient knowledge about the disease, p=0.047. Controlled diabetic patients (HBA1c% 6.5-7) had higher sufficient knowledge about diabetes compared to those whose HBA1c exceeded 10% (71.4% versus 40%). The difference was statistically significant, p=0.041. Conclusion:- Diabetic patients in Taifhave enough knowledge of the risk factors and symptoms of diabetes. However, they are not very well aware of thediabetes associated secondary complications.