Aim: Surveying patients with diabetes asking them questions about diabetic retinopathy to evaluate their awareness on the illness and to investigate the factors influencing their awereness.
Material and Methods: We distrubuted a specifically prepared questionnaire to randomly selected patients who visited the endocrinology clinic. The questionnaire consisted of three main sections including questions about demographic characteristics, risk factors for diabetic retinopathy and awareness of diabetic retinopathy
Results: We evaluated a total of 118 completed forms in our study. The results indicated that 8.5 % of the subjects were unaware of diabetic retinopathy. Although awereness of the patients on diabetic retinopathy increased with education level, the observation wasn’t statically significant. The results also indicated that 32.4% of the remaining 108 patients, who were aware of the eye complications of diabetes, preferred not to have regular eye examinations. While 106 patients were educated about diabetic eye complications by a doctor of internal medicine, none of them were found to be informed about diabetic retinopathy by media (newspapers, broadcasting, etc.). 20 out of 94 subjects, who had an eye examination by an ophthalmologist for diabetic retinopathy, were unaware if they had diabetic retinopathy or not.
Conclusion: We found a high retinopathy awareness (%91) among patients with diabetes but most of these patients preferred not to have regular eyes examinations. The doctors together with the media should play a more important role in educating patients with diabetes about diabetic retinopathy and its complications due to late diagnosis.
Key Words: Diabetes, diabetic retinopathy awareness, complications of diabetes
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