Parental interest in a bereavement support visit when a child dies from cancer.

Parents who have experienced the death of a child from cancer have unique bereavement needs. This study evaluated the possibility of instituting a home-based bereavement visit from the oncology team following a child's death. Parents completed a brief anonymous questionnaire measuring preferences regarding visit logistics and content.

Cancer therapy and the preservation of adolescent fertility.

The increasing survival of adolescents with cancer, achieved through intensive therapy, is often associated with sterility. For most teenagers, the ability to have biological children is psychologically and socially important. Methods of preserving fertility, some standard and other experimental, have proliferated, but their use raises ethical issues.

Transfusion-acquired Trypanosoma cruzi infection.

Background: A 3(1/2)-year-old girl with Stage 4 neuroblastoma received multiple blood components and was subsequently diagnosed with Chagas disease, which is caused by Trypanosoma cruzi.

Study Design And Methods: All blood donors of the units that were transfused were requested to return to the collection facility for a blood sample to be tested for antibodies to T. cruzi.

Antitumor activity of nifurtimox observed in a patient with neuroblastoma.

Background: Chemotherapy-resistant neuroblastoma is a difficult disease to treat with poor survival.

Observations: We treated a patient with neuroblastoma who had progressed on conventional chemotherapy. This 5-year-old girl with chemotherapy-resistant neuroblastoma developed Chagas disease at the start of salvage chemotherapy for which she was also started on nifurtimox.