Awareness of Foot Care among Diabetic Patients in Civil Hospital, Karachi

Abstract

Participants and Method: It was a questionnaire based descriptive study conducted during the period of August 2015 till March 2016. In this study all data was collected by the co-investigators during a period of 15^th august 2015 to 15^th march 2016, 200 patients were selected on the basis of internationally used equations used to calculate the sample size, and in the end data was analyzed by using SPSS 20.0 version.

Results: This study shows that most common risk factor associated with diabetic foot disease is neuropathy which forms 61% cases in case of males and 77% cases in case of females, being seconded by smoking among men with a frequency of 43% and high fasting glucose level among women with a frequency of 62%. Also this study shows that that 93% of males knows that they should take medications because they are much prone to the complications while on the other side among females great number of 90% of females knows that they should take medications because they are much prone to the complications. Also this study shows that about 96% of males practices to wash their feet daily with warm water while on the other hand 95% (great number of females) practices to wash their feet daily with warm water.

Conclusion: this study shows that there are few most common risk factors associated with Diabetic foot disease, and all of these risk factors can be controlled by maintaining blood glucose level both fasting and random within normal reference range as by doing this we can reduce the risk of Diabetes complications, ultimately we can cut down the frequency of Diabetic foot disease. Also this study shows that our subjects although have much knowledge and also practices few aspects but in general they are lacking in other aspects so by increasing awareness about diabetes and diabetic foot care we can cut down the rate of diabetic foot disease, a great threat to the world.

MesH words: Awareness; Foot care; Diabetes; Civil Hospital; KARACHI