Childhood Cancer Survivors At Higher Odds of Early Death

Summary:

This article is talking about the childhood cancer and breast cancer in women. It does mention couple other cancers as well, but most significance of this article is about the childhood cancer survivors at higher odds of early death. The author says that people who develop cancer at young age require lifelong monitoring and are at an increased risk of early death, which is true according to the outcome of two studies. In the article the authors tells us that the computer model developed by the study showed that health risks faced by childhood cancer survivors shorten their life length by an average of 10 years. It varies according to the type of cancer people have. As the author says, people with kidney cancer who survive died 4 years earlier than the general population and people with bone or brain cancers who survive dies 18 years earlier. The researchers noted that the short life expectancy could be the result of cancer treatments with long-term toxicity that were used in previous decades, which is what the author says in the article. If that is the case than I think we can definitely come up with something that is less toxic in treatment which will increase the time of life expectancy from past at least. Also as the author stated in article doctors should consider past cancer treatment and their long term effects when caring for childhood cancer survivor. Author also talks about the women with breast cancers. He says that the best thing for those women is the MRI and mammography beginning at age 25. People who have cancer certainly need help and most of them need help financially to fight the cancer.

Link to the article:
http://www.usnews.com/health/family-health/cancer/articles/2010/04/05/childhood-cancer-survivors-at-higher-odds-of-early-death.html

Personal Response:
I feel bad for those kids who get cancer at the early age. Sometimes they get cancer because they inherit from their ancestor. I agree with the author that doctors should consider past cancer treatment when caring for childhood cancer survivor. I do think that doctors did consider the long term effects of the toxic chemicals, but may be they didn’t have less toxic medicine back in days to cure cancer than we have today. There might have been some doctors who didn’t consider the long term effects.