According to a new study adult survivors of childhood cancer can expect to suffer from one or more chronic health problems years after their cancer has been cured.
Advances in the treatment of pediatric cancer means that almost 80 percent of children diagnosed with the disease will become long-term survivors; but cancer treatments themselves carry risks, as in order to cure the deadly disease, quite toxic therapies are needed.
Dr. Kevin Oeffinger, director of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's Program for Adult Survivors of Pediatric Cancer, in New York City, conducted a collaborative study on adult survivors of childhood cancer by working with researchers from more than two dozen cancer centers throughout the U.S. and Canada.
The team found that slightly more than one-quarter of adult survivors of childhood cancer will have a serious, even life-threatening condition decades after being treated for cancer.
Dr. Oeffinger, says because children and teens have organs which are still growing, they are particularly vulnerable to the effects of such therapies, and it is common to see chronic health problems years later.
According to the study, there approximately 270,000 American adults between the ages of 20 and 39 who are survivors of childhood cancers, which equates to about 1 out of every 640 adults in that age group.
Because childhood cancer survivors were increasing in numbers, many years after treatment, Oeffinger and his team believed a more accurate assessment of the long-term health effects were needed.
Dr. Oeffinger and his team used information from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, by co-author Anna T. Meadows, M.D., and colleagues at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, which gives details on more than 10,000 survivors and about 3,000 cancer-free siblings.
Dr. Meadows is nationally recognized as an expert in treatment-related effects of children's cancer and the researchers were able to see from her study how many adult survivors of childhood cancer had chronic health conditions compared to their brothers and sisters.
All of the cancer survivors were diagnosed between 1970 and 1986.
They discovered that 62.3 percent of the cancer survivors had at least one chronic health condition, a rate three times more than their siblings.
The percentage of the cancer survivor group who had a severe or life-threatening health condition was 27.5 percent, more than eight times higher than for their siblings.
Those in the group who had been diagnosed at least 30 years earlier, had an even higher rate of chronic health conditions, 73.4 percent, and after 30 years, those with a severe health problem jumped to 42.4 percent.