Determination of oral glucose tolerance test awareness in pregnancy

Abstract

Objectives: Gestational diabetes (GDM) is an important disease that should be diagnosed and treated early. Because GDM brings a number of risks for the mother and the baby. These risks can be prevented by treatment. Oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) is used for diagnosis of GDM. However, the number of pregnant women who don't want to receive OGTT due to lack of information, environmental factors and media factors increase considerably. Our aim in this study is to determine the frequency of those who don't want to undertake OGTT, why they don't want to have them, and the factors that don't want, to find situations that may be a risk factor in GDM, to investigate the effects of media on our health ideas. Materials and Methods: The study was performed between May-July 2018 at Kahramanmaras Sütçü Imam University pregnant clinic. All pregnant women older than 18 years of age were included in the study. Information was given to the pregnant women about the study and the consent form was signed. A questionnaire with 37 questions related to OGTT and GDM including sociodemographic information was applied by face to face interview method. The categorical variables were expressed with statistical parameters, frequency and percentage. The relationships between frequency distributions were evaluated by chi-square and Fisher's exact test. The statistical significance level was accepted as p<0.05. Results: A total of 317 pregnant women were reached.34.2%of them didn't want to have OGTT and 3.6% were undecided.28.4%of them thought that OGTT was harmful,38.5% stated that they were undecided about the damage.58%of those who thought it was harmful didn't take the test or thought about taking the test. It was determined that 42.9%of the people who said OGTT were harmful were from the TV and internet,55.7% from the environment, and 3.8% from the health workers. Conclusion: Those who don't want to receive OGTT in pregnant women are at a significant rate. They don't want to have OGTT because of inaccurate information and not based on the literature. This situation isn't affected by education level and other sociodemographic factors. The media plays a significant role in the formation and spread of this false information. It is important for the media to be more sensitive about this issue and to take advantage of experts in the field for OGTT awareness. Health care workers, health managers and the media play an important role in eliminating the lack of knowledge about the OGTT and GDM. The importance of training and informing for this awareness is clear. The lack of information and the removal of pollution in pregnant women will help to resolve the issue.