Survival from adolescent cancer.

Full Abstract

BACKGROUND:
Adolescent cancer is the leading cause of non-accidental mortality in young people. The tumour types occurring most commonly in this age group are distinctive and differ markedly from those developing in younger children and older adults.

OBJECTIVE:
The aim is to present survival data for the major types of cancer and for all malignancies combined in adolescents aged from 15 to 19 years, highlighting intercountry differences, temporal trends, and age/treatment regimen comparisons of survival rates.

RESULTS:
Results from European and American data show that 5-year overall survival among adolescents with cancer is approximately 73-78%, close to that observed among children. As in paediatric series, there are geographical differences, with lower survival rates in Eastern European countries. Adolescents have substantially lower survival than children for acute lymphoid leukaemia, malignant non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Ewing's tumour, osteosarcoma, soft-tissue sarcoma. Temporal improvement in survival from children cancer is twice higher than survival from adolescents malignancies.

CONCLUSION:
Several reasons could explain these geographical differences, such as better referral, greater availability of complex and expensive treatment regimens, reflecting variations in health care systems and resources. Age-group variations could be explained by differences in biology and in treatment regimen, and lack of participation in clinical trials. Some are inherent in the psychosocial characteristics of these patients, such as delays in seeking medical attention, poor compliance with treatment. It is necessary to focus on cancer in adolescence, as the new frontier in oncology, and adolescents with cancer must be now the subject of specific survival analyses.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Desandes, Emmanuel (E);

Affiliation: French National Registry of Childhood Solid Tumours, Université Henri Poincaré Nancy 1, Faculté de Médecine, 9, Avenue de la Forêt de Haye, BP 184, 54505 Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy cedex, France. emmanuel.desandes(-atsign-)medecine.uhp-nancy.fr

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Review

Journal: Cancer treatment reviews (Cancer Treat Rev), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Nov; vol 33 (issue 7) : pp 609-15

Dates: Created 2007/11/06; Completed 2008/01/03;

PMID: 17398011, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adolescent
Humans
Neoplasms - mortality

Risk Factors
Survival Rate - trends
World Health

These are the highest related articles currently in the database:

See 100+ related articles.