The importance of psychiatric support and treatment in a child with heart transplantation

Abstract

Chronic illnesses and situations requiring long-term hospitalization bring psychosocial burdens for children and their families. Especially in children who need organ transplants, family and child should be carefully examined in terms of preoperative and postoperative periods and necessary social support systems should be mobilized. It is known that in this period, patients could not express their thoughts and feelings about possible tissue / organ rejection, not being able to verbalize their anxiety and fears and make effective coping methods difficult to care and treatment. For these reasons, it is necessary to cooperate with mental health professionals with the related medicine fields in order to ensure compliance of the patient after transplantation and to provide psychiatric support and treatment. In this case report, we aimed to emphazise the importance of psychiatric evaluation before and after transplantation in a patient with diagnosis of restrictive cardiomyopathy and then underwent a heart transplantation from the national emergency transplant list.

Keywords

• transplantation
• hearth transplant child
• psychosocial support
• treatment