Mantas Jaras¹, Eglė Glumbakaitė¹, Vaiva Jievaltaitė¹, Goda Jievaltienė², Gediminas Šemeklis2
1Lithuanian university of health science, Medical Academy, Faculty of Medicine
2Lithuanian university of health sciences, Medical Academy, Department of General surgery
3Kaunas Clinical hospital.
ABSTRACT
Background and aim: There are a lot of accessible medical publications about risk factors, clinical manifestation and complications of peptic ulcer disease (PUD). To develop prophylaxis and improve the outcome of stomach and duodenal ulcers aim of the study was to evaluate community knowledge about these conditions.
Materials and methods: 186 respondents were questioned ausing the questionnaire made by the authors. In the questionnaire respondents were asked about the risk factors, clinical manifestation and complications of PUD. The correct answers were scored on 1 point and wrong with 0 point. Respondents were able to get maximum 26 points. The statistical data analysis was performed using the IBM SPSS 23. 0 program package.
Results: 59.1% of subjects were related with medicine and 40.9% were non-related. The answer to the question “Do you think Helicobacter pylori (HP) bacterium can cause PUD?” 81.7% of the respondents answered correctly. More than 95% of the respondents knew that PUD is related with bleeding (97.8%) and perforation (95.7%). The median of total scores was 20.
Conclusions:Two in ten people did not know about the main risk factor (HP) of PUD. Doctors had better knowledge than other respondents. There were no statistically significance different of knowledge between respondents sex or ulcer anamnesis so all persons in the community should be more informed about PUD.
Key words: peptic ulcer, community knowledge, gastrointestinal bleeding, perforation.