TOPIC DISCUSSION: Adolescents and Disease

We all have trouble managing patients who are in the late teens/ youths 18-22 as they themselves are in transition and its hard to connect with them.
Recently at the NKF meetings, I heard a great talk about this and learned some take home points.

1. Its hard for them to deal with Kidney disease, coming for dialysis  or taking their transplant medications
2. Rule of thumb is that , non adherence is fairly common than we think.
3. This non adherence has been well studied in Type 1 Diabetics ( 50% ) are non adherent and this might apply to ESRD/Transplant as well.
4. The best measure of non adherence is clinic attendance, followed by family,self and team reporting non adherence. The main problem we have with transplant is that the drug regimens are not simple.