Knowledge Of Patients Newly Diagnosed With Keratoconus About Keratoconus

 To evaluate patients knowledge about keratoconus and identification of the factor for an early diagnose and better treatment results.

Departament of Ophthalmology, University Hospital Center "Mother Teresa", Tirana, Albania

The research was done in the Departament of Ophthalmology, University Hospital Center "Mother Teresa", Tirana, Albania on 87 patients who were diagnosed with keratoconus. The research was conducted in the period from October 2021 to January 2022. The measuring instrument of this research was an anonymus questionnaire survey created for the purpose of this research.

The research included 87 patients ( 49 men and 38 woman). The mean age of te patients was 25+- 5.2 years. Statistic analysis showed that 62% of all patients had never heard before about keratoconus, the other part has heard 37% from classmates, 30% from siblings, 12% from social network, 9% from primary care, 7% from parents, 5% from books. 37% of the patients thought that keratoconus is a congenital desease, 27%  had no information. 22% of the patients declare that they had at least one sibling diagnosed with keratoconus. 32% thought that keratoconus is treated with a surgical procedure, 21% thought that is treated with eye drops, 24% with eyeglasses and 23% had no information.

The research has shown that is necessary to extend the education of the patients with quality informations in schools, universities and primary care to stimulate the patient’s ophthalmology examination for an early diagnose and better outcomes.