Investigation of actual daily lifestyle leading to continuous self-management after living-donor liver transplantation: more than 5 years living with living-donor liver transplantation and emotions of recipients.

AIM: This research aimed to investigate the actual daily lifestyle leading to continuous self-management after living-donor liver transplantation (LDLT), by interviewing more than 5 year survivors of transplantation on their lifestyles from various angles, such as meals, rests, and human relationships.

METHOD: In this research, survivors of more than 5 years were interviewed about their daily lifestyle, and a qualitative inductive approach to the analysis of continuous self-management was taken.

RESULTS: Interviews were conducted with 26 patients: 11 men and 15 women with an average age of 49 years (range, 22-76). Through analysis, 205 labels were extracted, which were aggregated into one core category, 13 categories and 68 subcategories. Differences in the three patterns of lifestyle--"the reflected lifestyle after operation", "unchanged daily lifestyle", and "self-management eases along with recovery"--occurred owing to differences in changes in values through the transplantation experience. The changes in values were affected by realization of the experience and the action, which come from various internal and external influences during the process of recovery. All of the recipients used consulting behavior to complement self-management after leaving hospital.

CONCLUSION: The daily lifestyle of transplant recipients was clarified by the patterns of lifestyle. Differences in the three lifestyle types occurred owing to differences in changes in values though the transplantation experience.