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Roughly 80% of children with cancer are cured, because, number one, the cancers that
they have are more amenable to multi-agent chemotherapy, and intensive chemotherapy
approaches, and number two because children don't have all of the other comorbidities: heart disease,
diabetes, and pulmonary problems, that the adults sometimes have. So generally children are much,
much more resilient and tolerate the therapy much better, and tolerate intensive therapy much better.
Since most children with cancer are cured, we have an increasingly expanding population of
survivors of childhood cancer, and by the year 2012, 1 in 500 young adults under the age of
30 is anticipated to actually be a survivor of childhood cancer. We recognize that the treatments
that we use have short-term complications and toxicities, as well as long-term complications.
We've learned some of that information by doing comprehensive longitudinal studies, and we've
modified our therapy, and we now have developed programs whereby we try to track children once
they complete clinical trials, and once they leave home, to go away to college, and finish
college, and go out and get married, and start developing careers on their own. We've developed
a tracking program, so that we can actually continue to remind survivors that they need
periodic surveillance. Not surveillance for their cancer coming back, but surveillance for some of
the long-term cardiac or pulmonary complications, or even possibly the development of second cancers.
I think it's very difficult, because number one nobody expects that cancer even exists in children,
and certainly parents are horrified to hear the news. And we recognize that everything we tell them
and try and explain about the disease, and about its treatment, is forgotten within 10 seconds of
our having provided the information, just because of the state of shock that you could imagine
they're in. So looking at available websites or print material is really very important for
families. I think Cancer.Net provides really an exhaustive and complete description of most [cancers], and
even the the very rare, less commonly occurring pediatric cancers, as far as basic information
about the diagnosis, treatment, new treatment approaches, as well as providing a comprehensive
resource of other foundations and organizations where patients and families can find help and support.
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