Transplant patients are confronted with physical, psychological and social challenges and stresses in all phases of treatment. Treatment is often focused primarily on medical aspects. As a result, potential problems and burdens for patients in the psychosocial area can be overlooked. In some transplant patients, psychological factors are also causally involved in the development and worsening of the physical disease process and therefore also require sufficient medical attention and therapy. Addiction disorders, such as those caused by alcohol and nicotine, with their known physical consequences, such as alcohol-associated liver disease, alcohol-related heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, are examples of this.

This new guideline is intended to contribute to the establishment of standards for psychosocial diagnosis, indication and implementation of psychosocial treatment as well as the dissemination of evidence-based recommendations. On the basis of this guideline, decisions in transplant medicine should be placed on a more rational footing (e.g. which interventions lead to an improvement in adherence; under which conditions is psychosocial co-treatment indicated). The guideline is intended to supplement the guidelines drawn up by the German Medical Association. It also deals with topics that otherwise receive less attention, such as the role of relatives, self-help, transition and transplant care. A detailed chapter is dedicated to living donation and the psychosocial risk factors for which there is evidence of an unfavorable change in psychosocial endpoints after organ donation.

The guideline was drawn up under the leadership of the psychosomatic societies (DKPM and DGPM) in collaboration with representatives from 15 other German and Austrian societies. Members from both pediatric and adult nephrology were involved in the development.