Long-term effects of childhood cancer therapy on growth and fertility

Abstract

Survival rates for most childhood malignancies have improved remarkably over the past decade with an overall survival rate for England and Wales for children less than 15 years of age quoted as 75 % (1993 and 1997) [1]. This improvement has been attributed to advances in treatment, better supportive care, and centralizing treatment in specialized centers with entry of patients into clinical trials [2, 3]. Approximately 1 in every 640 individuals in the US between the ages of 20 and 39 years is a survivor of childhood cancer [4]. Long-term survival rates vary with cancer type, demographic characteristics such as age, gender and race, tumor characteristics such as location and extent of disease, morphology, and genetic alterations.