The CF medical community has responded to the demographic shift by emphasizing age-appropriate care, Garvey said. In the last five years, realizing that many CF patients have outgrown pediatricians and children's wards, hospitals across the country have opened separate adult CF centers. This year, Annibali's hospital, Northwestern Memorial, opened an adult center with 30 patients. Marshall is director of the adult program at the Intermountain CF Center in Salt Lake City, one of the first such programs in the country. Physicians who treat adults are much more focused on patients making decisions about their own lives.
Pediatricians are often more paternalistic.
And that's where it be longs. It's not a fair disease, but only they can deal with it. Adult-oriented care was not always so readily available. The nurse asked me how old my child was. She did not return to the hospital for treatment.