TRAINING and EDUCATION
Patient Education
UNDERSTANDING
CHILDHOOD CANCER
Childhood cancers make up less than 1 percent of all
cancers diagnosed each year. About 10,380 children in the United States under the age of 15 will
be diagnosed with cancer in 2015. Because of
major treatment advances in recent decades,
more than 80 percent of children with cancer
now survive five years or more, but survival
rates vary depending on the type of cancer,
the specific cancer treatments used, the
doses of cancer treatment, and the child’s
age at the time of treatment.
Read below for more information about
childhood cancer and what to expect after a
diagnosis.
This Patient Education tear sheet was produced in collaboration with the American Cancer
Society (www.cancer.org).
The Most Common Types of Childhood Cancers
The most common cancers of children are:
• Leukemia
• Brain and other central nervous system tumors
• Neuroblastoma
• Wilms tumor
• Lymphoma (including both Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin)
• Rhabdomyosarcoma
In recent years, scientists have made great progress in understanding
how certain changes in our DNA can cause cells to become cancerous. Some children inherit DNA changes (mutations) from a parent that
increase their risk of certain types of cancer. Some of these DNA changes
are linked only with an increased risk of cancer, while others can cause
syndromes that also include other health or developmental problems.
However, most childhood cancers are not caused by inherited DNA
changes, but are the result of DNA changes that happen early in the
child’s life, sometimes even before birth. Every time a cell prepares to
divide into two new cells, it must copy its DNA. This process isn’t perfect,
and errors sometime occur, especially when the cells are growing quickly.
This kind of gene mutation can happen at any time in life and is called an
acquired mutation. Acquired mutations start in one cell. That cell then
passes the mutation on to all the cells that come from it. These acquired
DNA changes are only in the person’s cancer cells and will not be passed
on to his or her children.
• Retinoblastoma
• Bone cancer (including osteosarcoma and Ewing sarcoma)
Cut out and give to a patient
Risk Factors and Causes of
Childhood Cancers
Although lifestyle-related risk factors play a major role in many types
of cancer in adults (such as being overweight, smoking, and eating
an unhealthy diet), lifestyle factors usually take many years to influence cancer risk, and they are not thought to play much of a role in
childhood cancers.
A few environmental factors, such as radiation exposure, have
been linked with some types of childhood cancers. Some studies
have also suggested that some parental exposures (such as smoking) may increase a child’s risk of certain cancers, but more studies
are needed to explore these possible links. So far, most childhood
cancers have not been shown to have outside causes.
ASHClinicalNews.org
Treatment of Childhood Cancers
Treatments are chosen for childhood cancers based mainly on the type
and extent of the cancer. Treatment options might include surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and/or other types of treatment. In many
cases, more than one of these treatments is used.
There are exceptions, but childhood cancers usually respond well to
chemotherapy because they tend to be cancers that grow fast. (Most
forms of chemotherapy affect cells that are growing quickly.) Children’s
bodies are also generally better able to recover from higher doses of chemotherapy than are adults’ bodies. Using more intensive treatments gives
doctors a better chance of treating the cancer effectively, but it can also
lead to more short- and long-term side effects.
Unlike chemotherapy, radiation can often cause more serious side
effects in children (especially very young children) than in adults, so its
use sometimes needs to be limited. Doctors do their best to balance the
need for intensive treatment with the desire to limit side effects as much
as possible.
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