Abstract:
The purpose of this senior thesis is to examine the relationships that rare diseases and experimental treatments have on psychosocial development. This research is focused on a case study I completed and presented on a teenage girl, during which I leaned about cystinuria, auto-renal transplants, and adolescent psychosocial development. Auto-renal transplants have only recently and rarely been performed to alleviate the pain and some of the damage caused by the passing of cystine kidney stones. This paper considers one of the newest medical procedures and its effectiveness in terms of a patient with chronic cystinuria.