Awareness and Practices on Preventing Chronic Kidney Disease among Diabetes Mellitus Patients at Teaching Hospital, Batticaloa, Sri Lanka

- Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) has become a global burden and affects more than 10% of the population. There are many triggering factors which cause progressive and irreversible damage to the kidneys. Among those factors Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a leading cause of CKD. In Sri Lanka the number of CKD patients rapidly increased in last three decades and still CKD is an unsolved problem and it seems that the disease severely affecting the patient’s lives due to multiple factors including lack of proper treatment facilities. Hence this study was aimed to assess awareness and practices on preventing Chronic Kidney Disease among diabetic patients attending medical clinic at Teaching Hospital, Batticaloa. A cross sectional descriptive study was carried out to assess the awareness and practices on preventing CKD among 290 patients with DM attending medical clinic at Teaching Hospital, Batticaloa. Systematic sampling method was employed to recruit participants. After obtaining informed consent, data were collected through a pilot-tested, validated and interviewer administered questionnaire. Statistical package of Social Sciences version-26 was used for analyzing the data for obtaining frequencies and percentages using descriptive statistics. Nearly two third (60.7%) of the participants had heard about CKD even though in the same population, nearly half of the respondents (52.1%) had not aware that DM can cause CKD. 151 participants (52.1%) did not know that controlling blood sugar level can prevent CKD. The percentage of the individuals who assume that CKD can be caused by usage of some medications was 58.6%. Alcohol consumption (53.4%) and smoking (50.7%) were seen as risk factors of higher prevalence. However, majority of the participants had poor awareness that high blood pressure (56.9%), heart disease (71%) and obesity (85.5%) have associations with CKD. A higher percentage (88.6%) of the participants were following regular clinic and 56.9% individuals check their blood sugar level from the private setup when they were unable to attend the clinics. Majority of them (68.6%) had appropriate BMI and 81.7% were following good diet pattern. But they had poor practice on doing exercise (60.7%) and doing annual urine tests (52.8%). The findings reveal that more than half of the respondents had inadequate awareness on preventing CKD. Good practices towards preventing CKD were found in an optimal level. Awareness on the areas such as regular exercise and annual checkups should be improved in this population.