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Survey on comprehension and compliance of immunosuppressant medication was conducted in 97 kidney transplant recipients at the organ transplant clinic in Seoul National University Hospital from Septemer 23 to October 25, 1996. Medication teaching and patient counseling pharmacist consulted with patients by direct or telephone communications and checked medical records of them to find whether the patients understand about their medications, such as drug name, the reasones of medications, side effects, etc. From the present survey, it was noticed that noncompliance was 9.7%, which was lower percent than that of other reports or other diseases. Also the compliance was not effected significantly by ages(p=0.46) or duration of post-transplantation(p=0.148). The most of patients understood well about immunosuppresants which were administered to them, such as the drug name(98%), dosage form and content(96%) and variable adverse effects, but they didn´t understand about the importance of therapeutic drug monitoring(TDM) of cyclosporine and blood sampling condition (fasted). Also they understood well about the risk of the co-administration of other drugs(98%) and 47% of them knew that the reasons of risks were resulted from drug interaction. From the results of present study, it was found that noncompliance of immunosuppresants was low percent, but in order to maximize long-term renal allograft survival, the pharmacists must instruct the organ transplant patients about various informations which they didn´t understand, such as TDM and drug interactions.
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