Endocrine Abstracts

In the US approximately 12,400 individuals <age 20 years are diagnosed with cancer yearly. Current 5-yr survival rates are in excess of 70%;it is estimated that there are 250,000 survivors of childhood cancer in the US today. These remarkable survival rates are due, in large part, to advances in cancer therapy that have occurred over the past 30 years. The vast majority of children and adolescents diagnosed with cancer are exposed to multi-modality therapy. Unfortunately, l...

Some 10-15% of the 1:1000 young adults who are cancer survivors, has survived a brain tumour. Increasing treatment efficacy and decreasing long-term disability are important human and economic aims.The growth failure of children with brain tumours is multifactorial. Cranial irradiation, blamed for late neurotoxicity, is increasingly substituted by chemotherapy, but the disease itself, surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy must contribute. Evolving irradiatio...

The greatly improved survival of children and adolescents with malignancy now makes it important to assess the long-term adverse effects of cancer therapy. Loss of fertility is reported by cancer survivors to be a major concern. In women, this largely relates to gonadotoxicity of chemotherapy or local radiotherapy; uterine damage is less common and follows pelvic surgery or radiotherapy. All chemotherapeutic agents are gonadotoxic, but particularly the alkylating agents such a...