Treatment Adherence among Adolescent Cystic Fibrosis Patients

ABSTRACT

Cystic fibrosis (CF), an autosomal recessive monogenic disorder, leads to abnormal exocrine gland secretions. The complex treatment regimen is time-consuming, burdensome, and costly. Poor treatment adherence may result in increased morbidity and mortality, increased healthcare costs, and hospitalizations, resulting in school absenteeism, decreased productivity, impaired well-being, and decreased quality of life in adolescent CF patients. This non-experimental descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out with the objective to assess the level of treatment adherence, perceptions, and reasons for non-adherence on 30 adolescents with a documented diagnosis of CF in a Pediatrics Chest Clinic of a tertiary care facility in Northern India using the purposive sampling technique from June 2019 to February 2020. Data were collected using standard CF specific self-report questionnaires. The majority of the adolescents were boys (66.7%) with a mean age of 14.90 ± 2.09 years. Most of the adolescents were adherent to physiotherapy, vitamins, and enzyme supplementations. The most common reason for not doing physiotherapy (36.7%) and exercises (26.7%) was lack of time. For vitamins (46.7%) and enzyme supplementations (60.0%) adolescents with CF reported that they simply forget to take medications. The majority of adolescent felt about right about the physiotherapy (63.3%), vitamin (86.7%), and enzyme supplementations (83.3%). More than half of the participants felt that their exercise level was not enough (53.3%). Majority of adolescent CF patients were having positive perception regarding treatment adherence (86.66%). Treatment adherence is common problem among adolescent CF patients that needs regular reinforcement by healthcare team members on vital components of treatment.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescent
• cystic fibrosis
• treatment adherence
• perception
• reasons for non-adherence

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to extend the deepest appreciation to the adolescent children with CF who participated in the study as well as Mrs Sridevi (CF nurse) for their support during the entire data collection process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data not available due to ethical restrictions.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.