Word: curing
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...been huge strides in treating young children - about 80% of under-15s diagnosed with cancer in Australia and New Zealand will beat the disease, more than double the rate in the 1970s - adolescents and young adults aren't doing nearly as well: depending on the type of cancer, their cure rates are lagging as much as 30 percentage points behind. The figures for all - the most common childhood cancer - illustrate the point. Some 80% of child all patients will be cured; but the same disease will be beaten in only about 40% of cases involving 15- to 25-year-olds...
...their tablets," says Supple's oncologist, Glenn Marshall, of Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick. Both doctors think the main explanation for the divergence is that a much higher proportion of child cancer patients take part in clinical trials. "In child cancer medicine, trials have been the bedrock on which cure rates have gone up," says Marshall, adding that adolescents haven't had the same access to trials. The unspoken conclusion is that many young people have died needlessly as a result...
...linked to a university) and most of these kids are enrolled in trials. The idea of trials as bold experiments with mysterious drugs is wrong. Often there's no new agent involved. Oncologists have been treating all with the same eight drugs for more than 20 years; the improved cure rate among children results from new combinations and dosages proven in trials to work. Supple is part of a five-year trial involving infants and children under 17, in which most participants receive standard best treatment while those at greatest risk of relapse receive more aggressive treatment...
...middle and old age. These doctors, argue their pediatric counterparts, tend to back off on dosages too quickly, not appreciating how much more resilient younger people are. "Pediatric doctors are used to causing side effects and illness," says Marshall. "We accept that, because we know that there's a cure...
...Young, chief executive officer of CanTeen, a support organization for young people with cancer, echoes the calls of pediatric oncologists for centers or hospital wings dedicated to adolescent patients - there are eight such places in Britain, where authorities say it's too early to speculate on their impact on cure rates. To improve adolescents' chances, says Cole, "We need to understand what stops them participating in trials, help teenagers stick to treatment and develop more trials which target specific tumors in this age group. From doctors, hospitals and government ministers, we need a new philosophy of thinking." Then, perhaps, success...