Evaluation of the knowledge, attitude, behavior and awareness of patients with type 2 diabetes and diabetes mellitus about statin use in achieving lipid targets

Objective: Patients with a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes and dyslipidaemia for at least one year who applied to Akdeniz University Family Medicine outpatient clinics, accepted to participate in the study and gave consent were included in our study. It was aimed to evaluate the knowledge, attitude, behaviour and awareness of these patients about statin use. Method: Our study, which is a descriptive and cross-sectional study, was applied face-to-face through a questionnaire. A three-part questionnaire consisting of the first part including sociodemographic data and questions about the knowledge, attitudes, behaviours and awareness levels of the participants about statin use prepared in line with the relevant literature and the first part consisting of the Medication Compliance Reporting Scale and the Medication Compliance and Prescription Writing Scale was applied to the participants who agreed to participate in the study by face-to-face interview technique. Analyses were performed with SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) version 25.0. Statistical significance level was accepted as 0.05 in the study. Results: The majority of the 371 participants (61.5%) were between the ages of 41-65 and 56.6% were female. In the study, in which married participants (84.1%) were predominant, primary school graduates with 39.9% and secondary or high school graduates with 36.7% stood out in terms of education. The most common comorbidity accompanying the participants was hypertension with 56.9%. While 73.3% of the participants reported that they had previously been told that their blood cholesterol levels were high, 26.7% stated that they were not aware or did not remember that their cholesterol levels were high. While 77.9% of the participants reported that statin use was previously recommended, 65.2% thought that statin use was necessary. The rate of participants using statins was determined as 64.7%. 24.7% of the participants had never used statins before and 10.6% had started and stopped statin treatment. In the study, the participants were divided into three groups as statin treatment users, non-users and discontinued users and the total 83 scores of the Medication Adherence Reporting Scale were compared. No statistically significant difference was found between the groups. The total scores of the Medication Adherence and Prescription Prescribing Scale were compared according to the statin use status of the participants. It was found that the medication adherence score of the group who stopped using statins was significantly higher than those who did not use statins (p=0.049), while no significant difference was found between the other use groups. Conclusion and recommendations: The results of this study show that awareness of statin use, which is one of the most important intervention points in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases, which constitute the most important cause of morbidity and mortality in individuals with diabetes and dyslipidaemia, and initiation and maintenance of treatment are not at an adequate level. This situation reveals that more effort should be made to encourage statin use in patients and to ensure that these patients reach their cholesterol targets. Family physicians, who are the first point of contact, have important responsibilities in this regard. Keywords: Type 2 diabetes, dyslipidaemia, cardiovascular disease, statin use, medication adherence