title: Public Knowledge and Attitude toward Essential Tremor: A Questionnaire Survey.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Public awareness of and attitude toward disease is an important issue for patients. Public awareness of essential tremor (ET) has never been studied.
  
  
  METHODS
  We administered a 10-min, 31-item questionnaire to 250 consecutive enrollees. These included three samples carefully chosen to have a potential range of awareness of ET: 100 individuals ascertained from a vascular disease clinic, 100 individuals from a general neurology clinic, and 50 Parkinson's disease (PD) patients.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Leaving aside PD patients, only 10-15% of enrollees had ever heard of or read about "ET." Even among PD patients, only 32.7% had ever heard of or read about ET. After providing enrollees with three synonymous terms for ET ("benign tremor," "kinetic tremor," "familial tremor"), ~40% of non-PD enrollees and 51.0% with PD had ever heard or read about the condition. Even among participants who had heard of ET, ~10% did not know what the main symptom was, 1/3 were either unsure or thought ET was the same disease as PD, 1/4 thought that ET was the same condition as frailty- or aging-associated tremor, 2/3 attributed it to odd causes (e.g., trauma or alcohol abuse), only 1/3 knew of the existence of therapeutic brain surgery, fewer than 1/2 knew that children could have ET, and 3/4 did not know of a celebrity or historical figure with ET. Hence, lack of knowledge and misconceptions were common.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Public knowledge of the existence and features of ET is overall poor. Greater awareness is important for the ET community.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University , New Haven, CT , USA.
authors.forename: Sherif
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shalaby
authors.affiliation: Department of Vascular Surgery, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University , New Haven, CT , USA.
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Indes
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University , New Haven, CT , USA.
authors.forename: Benison
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Keung
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University , New Haven, CT , USA.
authors.forename: Christopher H
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Gottschalk
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University , New Haven, CT , USA.
authors.forename: Duarte
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Machado
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University , New Haven, CT , USA.
authors.forename: Amar
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Patel
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University , New Haven, CT , USA.
authors.forename: Daphne
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Robakis
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, Yale School of Public Health, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Center for Neuroepidemiology and Clinical Neurological Research, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
authors.forename: Elan D
authors.initials: ED
authors.lastname: Louis
keywords: attitudes; clinical; essential tremor; knowledge; survey