A practical approach to reporting treatment abandonment in pediatric chronic conditions |
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| Authors: | Meaghann S. Weaver MD Ramandeep S. Arora MBBS Scott C. Howard MD Msc Carmen E. Salaverria MPsych Yen‐Lin Liu MD Raul C. Ribeiro MD Catherine G. Lam MD MPH |
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| Affiliation: | 1. St Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee;2. Max Super Specialty Hospital, Saket, India;3. Hospital Nacional de Ni?os Benjamin Bloom, Centro Medico Ayudame a Vivir, San Salvador, El Salvador;4. Taipei Medical University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan |
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| Abstract: | Treatment abandonment, the failure to complete therapy that is required for definitive disease control, frequently causes treatment failure for pediatric patients in low‐ and middle‐income countries with chronic conditions, particularly cancer. Other forms of incomplete treatment affecting children in all settings, such as nonadherence and loss to follow‐up, are often confused with treatment abandonment. Unclear definitions of incomplete treatment dramatically affect reported outcomes. To facilitate disease‐specific and cross‐sector analyses, we outline a practical approach to categorize forms of incomplete treatment, present distinct semantic categories with case examples and provide an algorithm that could be tailored to disease‐ and context‐specific needs. Pediatr Blood Cancer 2015;62:565–570. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. |
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| Keywords: | adherence chronic disease loss to follow‐up outcome evaluation treatment abandonment treatment failure |
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