The number of adults who have survived childhood cancer in the United States has increased—but they face chronic health problems related to their treatment.
A new study, the first to estimate the prevalence of treatment-related chronic disease among survivors of childhood cancer at a national level, shows that as of 2011 there were nearly 400,000 childhood cancer survivors in the United States, up 60,000 from 2005.“We’ve been able to increase the number of survivors of pediatric cancer, but simply curing their disease isn’t enough,” said lead author Siobhan Phillips, assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Mental and Physical Conditions
“The magnitude of diseases at relatively young ages is quite striking, since you would not expect many of these diseases to be a problem in the general population until much older ages,” Phillips said.Among the health problems experienced by childhood cancer survivors are mental impairment, anxiety, pain, and physical limitations that affect daily living.
About 70 percent of the survivors of childhood cancers were estimated to have a mild or moderate chronic condition, and about 32 percent were estimated to have a severe, disabling, or life-threatening chronic condition.
Important Questions
“These facts should challenge all of us in the field not to be content simply with improving lifespan, but to dedicate the future of this field to improving the ‘health span’ of our survivors,” said Greg Armstrong, principal investigator of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study and a pediatrician at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.“Several important research questions arise from these findings as we consider how to increase our understanding of the chronic and late effects of treatment and how to best develop guidelines and interventions to treat these chronic morbidities in this important population,” said co-author Lynne Padgett, rehabilitation psychologist and program director of the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funded the study.
Childhood cancer survivors should have health care providers who are knowledgeable about their increased risk of chronic health problems, Phillips said.