Health literacy and cardiovascular disease in type 2 diabetes—a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Abstract Background The macrovascular complications are the main cause of death of diabetic patients. Health literacy is the capacity one can have in order to acquire, interpret, understand and communicate the information related to health, necessary for the diabetes control and, consequently, for the cardiovascular prevention. The main goal of this project is to understand the relationship between health literacy and the occurrence of cardiovascular events in a person with type 2 diabetes mellitus, as well as its relationship with adherence, enablement and quality of life. Methods Cross-sectional national pilot study of a prospective cohort, carried out in persons with DM2 selected by convenience in aleatory health regions. The Medical Term Recognition Test, the Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities, the Diabetes Empowerment Scale–short version-and the European Quality of Life–Visual analogue scale-were used. The Spearman correlation and the U of Mann Whitney test were used for statistical analysis. Results No significative relation was found between health literacy and the occurrence of cardiovascular events. However, people with previous isquemic coronary disease had an inferior evaluation in the literacy scale. People with more literacy were more predisposed to adhere to a specific diet, but not so much to physical activities. There was a significative relation between health literacy and the values of LDL (P = 0.046), age (P ≤ 0.001), education (P ≤ 0.001) and the Socio Economic Deprivation Index (P ≤ 0.001). Conclusions It is essential to continue to amplify the sample so that the longitudinal research can be achieved.