J Clin Gastroenterol. 2022 Oct 1;56(9):805-809. doi: 10.1097/MCG.0000000000001644.Epub 2021 Dec 15.

Laura C Hart ^1 2, Marina Arvanitis ³, Gregory S Sawicki ⁴, Maria Díaz-González de Ferris ⁵, Xian Zhang ⁵, Millie D Long ^5 6, Michael D Kappelman ⁵

Author information

¹Nationwide Children's Hospital.

²The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, OH.

³Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, Center for Applied Health Research on Aging (CAHRA), Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL.

⁴Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA.

⁵Departments of Pediatrics.

⁶Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC.

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study was to describe in detail the trends of the Transition Readiness Assessment Questionnaire (TRAQ-20) with respect to patient age and gender among a cohort of 655 youth with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) to enhance the tool's utility in clinical and research settings.

Materials and methods: All participants in the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation's IBD Partners and IBD Partners Kids and Teens Cohorts ages 12 to 21 who completed the TRAQ-20 at least once were included. We computed centile scores for the TRAQ-20 and applied Kernel regression to generate curves. We computed mean scores for each TRAQ-20 domain by age for the overall cohort and stratified by gender.

Results: TRAQ-20 scores generally increase with age. Males have a steeper trajectory from ages 17 to 19 compared with females. By age 21, median overall TRAQ-20 scores for women and men were 4.4 and 4.7, respectively. The "Talking with Providers" domain of the TRAQ-20 had high scores throughout the age range of the cohort, while others had lower scores in younger ages and higher scores in older ages. All TRAQ-20 domains had mean scores of 4 or greater (out of a possible 5) among 21-year-olds.

Conclusions: TRAQ-20 scores increase with age. The rate of increase varies by gender. Rates of increase also differ across domains. The use of transition readiness growth curves can help providers and researchers identify patients who are not achieving expected levels of transition readiness and determine the level of transition readiness that a patient much achieve before transfer to adult care.