Awareness about Glaucoma and Impact of Short Education among Patients Visiting Ophthalmology Outpatient Department at a Tertiary Care Hospital

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to assess the level of awareness about glaucoma and impact of short education among patients visiting ophthalmology outpatient department (OPD). Methods: A hospital-based cross-sectional study was carried at our institute. The patients were given a pretested questionnaire containing nine questions to assess the awareness level before and after the short education about glaucoma. Microsoft Office Excel and IBM SPSS version 21 were used for statistical analysis. Results: The study showed that only 40% and 38% of the participants were aware of the term intraocular pressure and glaucoma, respectively. It was observed that participants <40 years scored higher than those of >40 years in both pre-test and post-test. Awareness among urban population was 58.92%, while in rural it was 29.85% in pre-test. Of the population 39.89% with formal education while 14.28% patients with no formal education were aware of glaucoma. The mean pre-test score was 1.66 ± 2.35 before the short education programme and the post-test score was 8.49 ± 1.09; the difference was statistically significant with P value < 0.0001. Conclusion: In our study, the awareness of glaucoma in the population was low; however, it was slightly higher in the younger age group, in urban areas and in educated population. Improvement in the knowledge about glaucoma was observed following short education. This waiting period in ophthalmology OPD can be effectively utilized for educating the patients about glaucoma as it has a higher impact than the regularly observed methods of imparting glaucoma education to the masses.