Assessment and management of psychosocial challenges in pediatric liver transplantation

✍ Scribed by Eyal Shemesh

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 100 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1527-6465
• DOI: 10.1002/lt.21582

✦ Synopsis

Liver transplantation offers the potential of survival and acceptable quality of life 1 to children and adolescents who might otherwise not be able to live. However, despite the dramatic improvement in patients' health as well as outlook, liver transplantation is not a complete cure. Rather, the patient is trading a life-threatening, sometimes acute illness for a chronic one. The transplant survivor faces many challenges that are faced by other survivors of chronic illnesses. Patients need to adhere to a medication regimen and clinic follow-up schedules. They need to avoid certain situations (for example, exposure to a person who has a viral illness). Moreover, they live under the constant threat of a rejection or, in some cases, a relapse of their disease. These issues are perhaps even more important in children than adults. Children are expected to spend a full life span with their transplants. Also, children, more so than adults, face challenges related to the achievement of developmental tasks such as peer socialization and cognitive competency.

There is a vast literature related to the challenges facing chronically ill children, and it would be impossible to summarize it here. It would also not be especially original, as excellent texts already exist on the subject of pediatric adjustment to medical illness. [2][3][4] Rather than providing a generic review of psychosocial challenges, I have decided therefore to describe the ones that are fairly specific to the transplant situation.