Patient education and its effect on self-management in cirrhosis: a pilot study

Patients with cirrhosis can contribute significantly to maintaining compensation through simple lifestyle measures. It is, however, unknown whether they possess sufficient knowledge to make informed decisions with regard to their health, with few resources invested in patient education. We aimed to determine the level of knowledge that patients with cirrhosis possess and whether an information leaflet can make a positive impact on this.

We prospectively recruited clinically stable patients with cirrhosis to take part in a preintervention/postintervention study. Thirty-nine patients were recruited either to take part in a telephone-based questionnaire followed by repeating the questionnaire 2 months after receipt of a leaflet or to receive the leaflet directly and complete the questionnaire 2 months later.

The questionnaire demonstrated that baseline knowledge in the study group was poor, with a mean score of 3.4 out of a possible 9 points. There was a statistically significant improvement in the score to 7.5 in those who used the leaflet (Wilcoxon's signed-ranked test, P=0.0006). The mean score achieved by those who received the leaflet directly was 6.8, which is comparable to the scores of patients in the first cohort who read the leaflet and is significantly higher than the scores of the same participants before reading the leaflet (Wilcoxon's rank-sum test, P=0.001).

Our results suggest that patients with cirrhosis lack the knowledge to effectively manage their disease. The introduction of a leaflet resulted in a statistically significant improvement in understanding. Longitudinal studies are required to assess whether such interventions can result in improved clinical outcomes.