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.