The Degree of Disease Knowledge in Patients with Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease: A Multi-center Prospective Study in Korea.
Background/Aims
Patient education has been shown to be beneficial in several diseases. To properly educate patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), it is necessary to understand how much they already know about their disease. However, no study has examined the degree of disease knowledge in Korean patients with GERD. Therefore, we conducted this study to assess the degree of knowledge in such patients.


Methods
This multicenter prospective study was conducted from January 2014 to January 2015. A total of 746 patients (mean age, 52 years; 57.6% female) were enrolled from 7 hospitals in Korea. Inclusion criteria were diagnosis of GERD and ability to properly complete a survey. Degree of disease knowledge was assessed using the translated, validated Korean Urnes questionnaire, which consists of 22 items related to GERD.


Results
Mean percentage of correct answers was 46.3% and mean GERD knowledge score was 9.6. Degree of knowledge (mean percentage of correct answers) regarding etiology, prognosis, and treatment of GERD were 49.5%, 36.7%, and 37.5%, respectively. Degree of disease knowledge differed significantly according to age (P < 0.001), education (P < 0.001), income (P = 0.028), and occupation (P < 0.001). In multivariate analysis, using multiple logistic regression, the higher knowledge score group tended to have higher education and professional occupation.


Conclusions
The surveyed Korean patients had relatively low disease knowledge, suggesting that a GERD educational program may be beneficial in Korea. Formulation of a program is underway.
['Jeong|In Du|ID|', 'Park|Moo In|MI|', 'Kim|Sung Eun|SE|', 'Kim|Beom Jin|BJ|', 'Kim|Sang Wook|SW|', 'Kim|Jie-Hyun|JH|', 'Sung|Hye Young|HY|', 'Oh|Tae-Hoon|TH|', 'Kim|Yeon Soo|YS|', '|||']
Knowledge Gastroesophageal reflux Korea Surveys and questionnaires