A Survey on Normal-Pressure Hydrocephalus in Shanghai Community Health-care Professionals in Yangpu Community Training Program for Rehabilitation Medicine

Abstract

Objectives: Gait ataxia, incontinence, and cognitive impairment are three typical symptoms of normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH), however, similarity to other diseases' presentation, the diagnosis of NPH can be frequently missed. NPH-related education program to healthcare professionals appears very well needed and could be a promising way to improve its early diagnosis and treatment, but the actual effect of training programs is unknown. Therefore, we launched the Yangpu Community Training Program and conducted a survey to investigate the knowledge and awareness of NPH among rehabilitation professionals and the effectiveness of our training program. Methods: We conducted a well designed survey among the participants before and after education of NPH and analyzed the responses of returned questionnaires. We compared the percent of respondents who never learned about NPH before and after training, and analyzed potential factors (year of graduation and professions) that might affect NPH education. We also examined the source of the acquired NPH knowledge and the percentage of respondents who demonstrated their increased knowledge of this disease. Results: Eighty-two and eighty-six questionnaires were returned before and after training, respectively. Based on data from the returned questionnaires, more than 80% of participants in the training program are rehabilitation therapists (physical, occupational and speech therapists), 15% are physicians, and 2% are nurses. Before participating in the training program, more than two fifths (41.46%) surveyed healthcare professionals had never learned about NPH, however this number dropped to 4.76% after training, Sixty percent participants indicated that they learned about NPH from the provided training programs. Conclusion: Our results demonstrate that NPH knowledge is lacking among healthcare professionals and that training programs are effective in NPH education. We expect that increased knowledge of this disease would result in improvement on early detection of this condition and appropriate intervention implemented to reduce the patients, family and health care burden in the future.