Texting aids teens with liver transplants
CHICAGO (Reuters Health) - For teenagers who've had a liver transplant, text message reminders to take their medications reduce the risk of organ rejection.
That finding comes from a study of 41 young liver transplant recipients, reported here during Digestive Disease Week by researchers from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
The patients had been transplanted on average 13 years before the study, at an average of 2 years. Seventy percent of them self-administered their medications, designed to stop their immune system from rejecting the donor liver.
In each case, the primary medication administrator -- the patient or caregiver -- specified times at which reminders to take the immune-suppressing drugs should be texted to their cell phones. They were expected to reply to the reminder with a texted response. Texts were sent for six months.
Levels of the drugs were measured in blood samples, to check on how well the youngsters were adhering to their treatment, Dr. Tamar Miloh explained.
Miloh commented that it's estimated that as many as 40 percent of adolescents with a liver transplant don't stick with their medication regimen, which is the primary reason that donor organs are rejected.
During the year before the study, 49 percent of the patients showed drops in their drug levels that put them at high risk for rejection. After 6 months of the texting program, only 15 percent of patients had dangerously low drug levels, the researcher reported.
Overall, in the year before the study began, there were 12 episodes when a liver began to be rejected, but only two such episodes after the text messaging started.
Thirteen patients dropped out, mainly because of cost, as families had to pay for the phones and text messaging. Even so, these patients still showed improved compliance with taking their meds.
"We believe that during those six months, the behavior of adherence was learned, reinforced, and then was carried on even after they dropped out," Miloh said.
The researchers are applying for a grant to conduct a larger trial, in which cell phones and service charges will be provided.
