Diabetes Education Intervention: Does Scholarity or Previous History of Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events Influence Its Effectiveness? |Biomedgrid

A patient-centered approach has been increasingly stimulated in the management of chronic diseases such as Diabetes Mellitus (DM) [1]. This approach stands for patients playing an active role in their own care and being involved in goal setting and treatment planning [2]. However, low schooling may be a barrier to this active participation and successful treatment. In fact, recent data from Brazil showed that DM mortality rate was ten times higher for people with less than eight years of study [2]. The main cause of death in patients with DM is cardiovascular disease and therapeutic efforts should aim to prevent these events. Although an acute event such as acute myocardial infarction can cause important physical, emotional and social distress, the experience can be a motivator for changes in habits and the search for information to improve self-care of the underlying disease. Education strategies as a way to improve problem-solving skills and DM self-care may be focused on individual or group basis. These strategies have already shown to positively affect glycemic control [3], although people with low schooling level have been either disadvantaged or excluded from educational proposals [4]. Also, some of these education strategies are costly, time-consuming and require a great deal of personal commitment from the health care team [3]. The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare knowledge and attitudes of individuals with DM with and without previous history of Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events (MACE) and to determine the effectiveness of a simple and low-cost health education intervention.