Functional Health Literacy in chronic cardiovascular patients

Functional Health Literacy (FHL) is the ability to retrieve, process and understand information in order to make appropriate decisions regarding self-care, defined by the World Health Organization as a social determinant of health. Its evaluation is important especially between patients with noncommunicable chronic diseases, given the need of permanent health care. This paper aims to evaluate the FHL in patients with chronic cardiovascular diseases and possible implications to the understanding of the disease and medical instructions and adherence to the measures proposed by health professionals. This is a cross-sectional and quantitative study with the application of tool S-TOFHLA and a structured questionnaire on 345 patients of a cardiovascular disease outpatient service in Juiz de Fora. Less than a half (49.3%) of the sample showed adequate FHL. Satisfactory FHL was associated with lower ageand higher schooling. Lower FHL evidenced that it can influence the impaired comprehension of the disease and medical instructions and the rare habit to question professionals. A high prevalence of inadequate FHL was identified in our sample and was associated with the impaired understanding of the disease and medical instructions, showing the need to streamline medical communication in this group.