[Therapeutic compliance in adolescents with chronic disease]

In clinical practice, non-compliance is an often unrecognised or frustrating reality, which physicians find difficult to accept or deal with. Possible determinants of adolescents' level of compliance may be divided into demographic factors, patient and family characteristics, aspects of the illness and treatment regimen, and quality of the patient-doctor relationship. Compliance should be viewed as a reflexion of the experience of chronic illness as well as the expression of specific adolescent developmental issues. Practical guidelines are proposed.