Special Problems of Post-Transplantation Care in Adolescents

Transplant survival is reduced in adolescent patients compared to children and adults. Non-compliance is considered to be the main reason for rejections and, therefore, seems to be responsible for the worse long-term transplant survival. For this reason, treatment and care of adolescents and young adults after organ transplantation is a challenging situation. Identification of the factors influencing youth behavior is important, however, intensive care, especially carefully tackling individual problems, is needed to obtain patients’ satisfaction with treatment strategy and care-givers as well as acceptance of the transplanted organ. The young patients have to be trained to take over self-responsibility. This challenge can only be met successfully as a team (physicians, nurses, assistants, social workers, psychologists, family and friends) in order to achieve an improved quality of life and a prolonged transplant survival.