Childhood cancer survivors continue to suffer complications despite better treatment

Adults diagnosed with cancer and treated as children in the 1990s were more likely to suffer issues like poor health and anxiety than those who were treated as children in the 1970s, a new study revealed.

The researchers said they had not expected to such results, given significant advancements in technologies used to treat children with cancer over three decades.

They pointed out that patients treated for cancer are living longer nowadays when we compare them with the past generations. According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, more than 80 per cent of kids diagnosed with the deadly disease are alive at least 5 years after their diagnosis.

Physical therapist Kirsten Ness, who co-authored the study, said, “I kept looking at the data, thinking, 'This can't be right.' We were sort of expecting that they wouldn't have as many problems with their perceived health as survivors who were treated in earlier generations.”

Ness is a faculty member in the Department of Epidemiology & Cancer Control at Memphis, Tenn.-based St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

However, Pam Gabris of the National Children’s Cancer Society’s Beyond the Cure Program acknowledged that results of the study are quite disappointing, but she added that survivors’ awareness of potential health complications resulting from cancer treatment has improved.

As per data published by the National Children’s Cancer Society, the U.S. has an estimated 15.5 million cancer survivors, and nearly 66 per cent of them experience one or more late effects from their disease, or treatment or both.