The process of assessing adolescent patient who need liver transplant because of suicide attempt

Abstract

Suicide ideations, attempts and completed suicides are frequent situations in clinical practice of child and adolescent psychiatry. Besides, these situations especially are more common in adolescence period and suicide is one of the major causes of death for this age group. Just because of its easy accessibility, paracetamol (acetominophen) is a drug that is commonly used in suicidal attempts. Paracetamol toxicity is a fatal situation which is one of the most frequent causes of acute liver failure. Liver transplantation is the only option for treatment of acute liver failure. Transplantation from a living donor is the first option because of limited organ sources. In transplantation process, both donor and recipient must be evaluated psychiatrically. Child and adult psychiatrists must work in cooperation with organ transplantation team, in this emergency of which a race against time endures. Furthermore, unlike from adult psychiatrists, child psychiatrists have to evaluate candidate pediatric cases according to their developmental characteristics. In this article, we aimed to evaluate pretransplantational process of child psychiatry consultation in an adolescent who has hepatic failure due to paracetamol intoxication. We discussed the common and urgent medical and psychiatric situations that may be experienced in emergent transplantation cases.