The Lingering Fear After Beating Childhood Cancer скачать в хорошем качестве

The Lingering Fear After Beating Childhood Cancer

Dr Maurie Markman examines a recent study on the prevalence of fear of cancer recurrence among childhood cancer survivors. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/... -- TRANSCRIPT -- Hello. I'm Dr Maurie Markman, from City of Hope. I want to briefly discuss a very interesting, provocative, and, I would argue, concerning analysis. This is one where the negative part would not commonly be discussed because [the focus is on] the positive part, which is the discussion of childhood cancer. Particularly, we're talking about a paper that was recently published, “Fear of Cancer Recurrence in Adult Survivors of Childhood Cancer.” The good news is the success rate and the percentage of patients who are cured of the illness. It's a major success story for the medical establishment in the United States, and around the world, in terms of the impact that treatment has had on survivorship. This particular paper looked at a different aspect of this, fear of recurrence. This was an analysis of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, looking at long-term survivors of cancer. There were 31 institutions that participated. These were children who had been treated between 1970 and 1999 in North America. This was an online survey, which was conducted in October 2018 through April 2019. The data were analyzed in May 2023 to July 2024. There were 229 survivors of childhood cancer who responded. To give you an idea of the duration of time, the mean time from treatment to this survey was 32 years. What did the investigators find? Of the individuals who reported, 16.6% had what was defined as clinically significant fear of cancer recurrence. Again, let me say that this was a mean 32 years after the diagnosis, and almost 17% had a clinically significant fear of recurrence. Another 16% reported a high fear of cancer recurrence. More than 30 years later, approximately one third of these individuals had a high [or clinically significant] fear of a recurrence. This was most prominent in individuals who had neurologic chronic health conditions (likely related to the prior treatment), individuals who had received pelvic radiation, and individuals who had required an amputation or limb-sparing surgery as part of their treatment. They are obviously remembering what they went through years before. I think this is a very important analysis. There's nothing here that takes away from the enormous success of treatment of childhood cancer, but we need to remember that there is a long-lasting impact. Here, we're not even talking about chronic health conditions associated with treatment, although it was alluded to in the report; we’re focusing on the fear. Whether it's additional behavioral therapy or other support that these individuals need, they cannot be forgotten. Yes, it's a major success for treatment, but the potentially negative impact long term is not insignificant. Thank you for your attention. Transcript in its entirety can be found by clicking here: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...