Paper
Sunday, November 4, 2007
111
Effects of Technology-Based Family Intervention on Patients with Hyperuricemia in China
WenLi Huang, MSN, RN and Tao (Tracy) Yin, PhD, RN. School of Nursing, Shanghai JiaoTong University, Shanghai, China
| Learning Objective #1: explore a new way of using modern technology for family intervention which may be used in their own clinical practice. |
| Learning Objective #2: gain new insights in health promotion and disease prevention. |
Background: The prevalence rate of hyperuricemia has increased significantly in China, especially for men. Hyperuricemia has been identified as a risk factor for several serious cardiovascular diseases. Controlling the level of blood uric acid can be very promising in general health promotion and disease prevention.
Objective: (a) to develop a technology based intervention program to promote diet and life style changes for people with hyperuricemia and (b) to test the effectiveness of this intervention.
Methods: Sixty-six people with hyperuricemia were randomly assigned into treatment and control groups. Both client and his mother or wife who is responsible for family meal cooking and planning in the experimental group had been followed up with periodical short messages focusing on nutrition and lifestyle considerations for hyperuricemia using specially designed software. In the mean time, people in the control group were only offered routine information regarding hyperuricemia at the beginning of the study. After 3 months, another uric acid level was obtained for the remaining 61 subjects and ANCOVA test with pre-test uric acid level as covariate was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment.
Results: The uric acid level decreased significantly over 3 months in both the experimental and control groups. However, the experimental group had greater improvement than the control group (F (1, 60)=5.764 , p<0.02 ).
Conclusions: Nursing education and intervention using modern information technology can be very effective in reducing the blood uric acid level. The results obtained here with a Chinese sample could be applied elsewhere to promote a healthy lifestyle and controlling major health risks.