Getting control during follow-up visits: the views and experiences of parents on tumor surveillance after their children have completed therapy for rhabdomyosarcoma or Ewing sarcoma.

Purpose: Patients treated for rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) or Ewing sarcoma (ES) are subject to extensive follow-up after completion of therapy. The aim of this follow-up is to monitor treatment side effects and to detect relapse in an early phase to improve prognosis after relapse. Little is known about parental emotional experiences during this period.

Patients' and parents' views regarding supportive care in childhood cancer.

Purpose: Intensive therapies in pediatric malignancies increased survival rates but also occurrence of treatment-related morbidities. Therefore, supportive care fulfills an increasingly important role. In planning development of guidelines with incorporation of shared decision making, we noticed that little is known about the needs and preferences of patients and their parents.

Sustaining innovation and improvement in the treatment of childhood cancer: lessons from high-income countries.

Cancer in children and adolescents is rare and biologically very different from cancer in adults. It accounts for 1·4% of all cancers worldwide, although this proportion ranges from 0·5% in Europe to 4·8% in Africa, largely because of differences in age composition and life expectancy. In high-income countries, survival from childhood cancer has reached 80% through a continuous focus on the integration of clinical research into front-line care for nearly all children affected by malignant disease.

High prevalence of complementary and alternative medicine use in the Dutch pediatric oncology population: a multicenter survey.

Although complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is widely used in the pediatric population, research on the use of these therapies in the pediatric oncology population is of mixed quality. In this multicenter survey, we investigated the prevalence of CAM use, possible determinants of use, and parental attitude towards communication and research on CAM therapies. The prevalence of CAM use in the past 12 months was assessed by using a questionnaire based on the European guidelines on CAM research, filled out by parents of children visiting pediatric oncology outpatient clinics of six academic hospitals in the Netherlands.

Improving recruitment to clinical trials for cancer in childhood.

Clinical trials have underpinned progress in the treatment of cancer in childhood: about 75% of children newly diagnosed with cancer can expect to be long-term survivors. This success has been achieved because most children with cancer have participated in available clinical trials. This high level of engagement of the childhood-cancer community relies on the so-called therapeutic alliance that begins between doctors and families when a child is diagnosed with cancer.