Patients’ knowledge of probiotics

Tatjana Zdravković, Tatjana Egic, Tatjana Pokusevski

Keywords: probiotics, knowledge

Aim:

Diet and nutrition are important factors in promoting and maintaining good health throughout life. Probiotics which has been defined as “Live
microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host”are link diet and health.
The purpose of the work is to determine how much the patients of the Health Center "Novi Sad" know about probiotics and whether there are statistically significant differences concerning gender.

Method:

The study was planned as a survey with a specially designed closed questionnaire for self-completion in electronic form. The approval of the Ethical Commission of Health Center "Novi Sad" was obtained for conducting the study.

Results:

During the research, 416 questionnaires were filled out, 325 (78.13%) by women and 91 (21.88%) by men.
The minimum age of the respondents was 19, the maximum was 78, and the average was 44.98 (12.836 SD) years.
In the observed sample, 164 people (39.42%) had completed secondary school, 42 (10.10%) had completed college, and 210 (50.48%) had completed university, there were no respondents who had not completed school or had only completed elementary school.
The lowest percentage of correct answers, 20.43%, was given by respondents to the question of what probiotics are. The respondents gave the highest percentage of correct answers (94.23%) to the question of whether probiotics are present in fermented food. Respondents answered the rest of the questions correctly in the range of 52.40% to 89.66%. A statistically significant difference concerning the gender of the respondents was found only in the question of which conditions, apart from intestinal infections, antibiotics are still useful for.

Conclusions:

The range of correct answers ranged from 20.43% to 94.23%. On 9 questions out of 10 questions, more than 50% of the respondents answered correctly, which indicates a satisfactory level of knowledge of the respondents about probiotics.

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