Abstract

Objectives: To study the awareness about the disease related complications in the diabetic patients who are, as yet, not suffering from any long-term complication.
Methods: A cross-sectional observational study was conducted involving 389 patients of type 2 diabetes for a period of two years, from March 2018 to March 2020 in a tertiary care centre. The patients having disease diagnosed with in last five years and not suffering from any diabetic related complication were included in the study. The questions pertaining to the knowledge about complications related to eyes, kidneys, nerves, brain and heart were asked and recorded. The data was entered in MS EXCEL spreadsheet and analysis was done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0.
Results: The most common complication known was retinopathy (45.48%), followed by nephropathy (38,69%), peripheral neuropathy (33.42); cardiac complications (26.13%) and stroke (37.19%). The factors associated with good knowledge and awareness were advanced age, higher socioeconomic status, male gender and presence of positive family history of diabetes.
Conclusion: There is a wide gap in the knowledge of Diabetes and its related complications among the patients which may prevent them from taking good care about their glycaemic levels. It demands a bidirectional approach by the treating doctor and the patient himself to update the knowledge about the chronic debilitating nature of the disease to better the outcomes of the patients in terms of associated morbidity and mortality.