Kids With Cancer Have Problems As Adults

Childhood cancer survivors often develop serious health problems as a result of their treatment, especially if they received radiation, say Dutch doctors.

Adults who had bone tumors have the highest number of problems (64 percent), while survivors of leukemia or Wilms tumor have the fewest (12 percent), according to an analysis by researchers at Emma Children’s Hospital in Amsterdam.

Problems seen in childhood cancer survivors in order of occurrence included orthopedic disorders, second cancers, obesity, fertility disorders, psychosocial or cognitive disorders, neurologic disorders and endocrine disorders.

The Dutch team also found that only 19.8 percent of the patients studied were free of adverse events, 74.5 percent had experienced one or more, and 24.6 percent had experienced five or more. A severe, life-threatening or disabling problem had occurred in 36.8 percent, and 3.2 percent had died from such a problem.

Fifty-five percent of patients treated with radiation had at least two severe events or one life-threatening or disabling event. That figure was 25 percent for patients treated with surgery alone and 15 percent for patients who received chemotherapy alone.

The researchers studied 1,362 five-year survivors of childhood cancer treated in a single institution in the Netherlands between 1966 and 1996. Median follow-up was 17 years, and 88 percent of the survivors were younger than 35.

A report on the research is published in the June 27 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.