Quality of Available Cardiovascular Disease Knowledge Tools: A Systematic Review

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Health Literacy
• Cardiovascular Disease

Background:

• Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide.
• Low health literacy is a significant barrier to effective CVD prevention and management.
• Standardized assessment of patient knowledge is lacking, hindering tailored patient education.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically identify and evaluate the quality of available knowledge assessment tools for cardiovascular disease (CVD).
• To provide clinicians with a comprehensive overview of existing CVD knowledge tests to inform patient education strategies.

Main Methods:

• Conducted comprehensive electronic database searches (Medline, CINAHL, PsycINFO, PsycTESTS) up to October 2022.
• Utilized the Psychometric Grading Framework (PGF) to rigorously assess the quality of identified CVD knowledge tests.
• Included original test development papers and language translation studies.

Main Results:

• Identified 28 studies, including 18 original test development papers and 10 translation papers.
• The most frequently assessed domains included CVD risk factors, nutrition, heart physiology, physical activity, and treatment.
• Only three tests achieved a high-quality A grading on the PGF, and one provided patient classification guidance.

Conclusions:

• This review identified 15 new CVD knowledge assessment tools, expanding the available resources for clinicians.
• Multiple high-quality, multilingual CVD knowledge tests are now accessible to help tailor patient education.
• Further research is needed to develop tests for low health literacy populations and validate them against health outcomes.