Public lacks knowledge on chronic kidney disease: telephone survey.

Objectives: To examine knowledge of chronic kidney disease in the general public.

Design: Cross-sectional telephone survey.

Setting: Hong Kong.

Participants: Community-dwelling adults who spoke Chinese in Hong Kong.

Results: The response rate was 47.3% (516/1091) out of all subjects who were eligible to participate. The final survey population included 516 adults (55.6% female), of whom over 80% had received a secondary level of education or higher. Close to 20% of the participants self-reported a diagnosis of hypertension. Few (17.8%) realised the asymptomatic nature of chronic kidney disease. Less than half of these individuals identified hypertension (43.8%) or diabetes (44.0%) as risk factors of kidney disease. Awareness of high dietary sodium as a risk factor for chronic kidney disease was high (79.5%).

Conclusions: The public in Hong Kong is poorly informed about chronic kidney disease, with major knowledge gaps regarding the influence of hypertension on kidney disease. We are concerned about the public's unawareness of hypertension being a risk factor for kidney disease. Future health education should target areas of knowledge deficits.