Introduction: Chronic disorders may negatively affect people’s learning status, marital status, occupational life, and social life. Liver transplant is the only curative treatment for chronic liver diseases. This study was undertaken to evaluate the psychosocial effects of liver transplant in adult patients who had undergone liver transplant during the pediatric period compared with psychosocial facts in the general population.
Methods: We retrospectively reviewed adult patients (>18 years of age) who had received liver transplant as children. We compared sex, age at the time of transplant, current age, donors, graft survival status, marital status, age at first delivery, number of children, educational status, and occupational status in the study population versus the normal population. To compare the liver transplant patients included in the study with the normal population correctly, we used Turkish Statistical Institute (TSI) data.
Results: Among 77 liver transplant patients included in our study, the mean age at transplant was 10.9 years (range, 0.5-16) and the mean age at the time of the study was 25.2 years (range, 18-42). Of the patients, 61 (79.2%) were single and 16 (20.8%) were married. Patients in the study population married at a younger age than the general population (25.5 vs 28.1 years for men, 24.3 vs 25.4 years for women). Of 16 married patients, 9 (56.2%) had healthy child/children. The percentage of patients who graduated from higher education or were continuing their higher education process was higher in our study population than in the general population (22.8% vs 36.3%). Among our study population, 37 patients (48%) were workers.
Conclusions: Our study shows that liver transplant had no negative effects on the social, educational, and professional lives of adults who received transplants in the pediatric period.