Årsaker til at barn og unge slutter med insulinpumpebehandling

Abstract

English Abstract -“Reasons why children and adolescents choose to quit insulin pump therapy” (“Årsaker til at barn og unge slutter med insulinpumpebehandling”)

Why do some of the patients choose to quit insulin pump therapy?

Continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion is one of the best treatments for type 1 diabetes. Still, some of those who receive this treatment choose to quit.

The purpose of this study was to find out why children and adolescents consider quitting pump therapy, and which improvements can be made to make less people quit. We collected data from 6 different hospitals and one diabetic centre on the southeast part of Norway. The total number of patients who decided to take part in the study was 47 out of 88 (participation percentage: 53,4 %). We had to exclude five of these because of our inclusion criteria. The range of age was from 7-29 years. 69% of the participants were girls. In average they used insulin pump for 4 years and they all stopped using pump therapy within the last 5 years. The data were collected through a questionnaire.

The most common reasons for quitting pump therapy in our study were that the pump was visible for others, needle incision was painful, risk for needle site infections and too much time spent changing needles, tube set and insulin ampoule. Some of the patients describe the psychological factor as a main reason for quitting pump therapy. This is especially of importance in the adolescents. In the younger age group, painful needle incision is one of the major reasons for quitting. In most of the cases the user himself chooses to quit, although this was not suggested by the doctor or the nurse. This indicates that these patients do not quit because of medical reasons. The most requested improvements are a less visible pump and better needles.