The Golisano Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida hosts a conference Oct. 19 highlighting the long-term effects experienced by survivors of childhood cancers.
The Hospital’s first Pediatric After Cancer Experience Conference (PACE) brings together young adult cancer survivors, their families, and medical professionals for a day long series of talks and personal testimonials about the long-term effects of surviving childhood cancer.
“There’s a whole long list of potential long-term effects of this treatment and many of them are very specific to whether a child gets radiation or not; whether they get a specific drug or not,” said conference keynote speaker, Dr. Daniel Armstrong of the Department of Pediatrics at the Mailman Center for Child Development at the University of Miami.
“It sometimes interferes with the growth of a child’s growing body and that can affect the brain…we have children with short stature who don’t grow to be as tall,” he said. “We have the effects on the brain and cognitive and learning function. We can have reproductive issues.”
The body of information related to long-term effects is limited to about 20 years. “And the reason for that is that we didn’t have children who survived much more than 20 years,” said Dr. Armstrong. “So we’re now beginning to look at children who are leukemia survivors who are 35 to 40 years of age.”
Dr. Armstong says today, more than 75 percent of children diagnosed with some form of cancer are expected to survive.
The Golisano Children’s Hospital’s first Pediatric After Cancer Experience conference is from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Sanibel Harbour Marriot Resort & Spa in Fort Myers.
