 |  |  | | | Response to study on survival rate for children with leukaemia | | | | |
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Release Date: 2 July 2008
Articles in newspapers (Wednesday 2 July 2008) report that a predicted 79% per cent of children diagnosed with the commonest type of leukaemia in 1990 will survive. Yet it is well documented that survival rates for children have been increasing year on year thanks to high quality research by charities such as Leukaemia Research, the UK’s leading blood cancer charity.
Newspaper articles based on research published in the British Journal of Cancer (Shah et al. 2008) talk about children who are cured of leukaemia – cure here meaning that they have the same life-expectancy as other children of the same age.
Ken Campbell, Clinical Information Officer for Leukaemia Research says: “It is more usual to quote a five-year survival figure, as relapses past five years are uncommon and those children who do relapse late have a good chance of responding to re-treatment. But it has long been accepted that these children also have a slightly higher risk of dying than do their peers who have never had cancer. This study showed that for children diagnosed in 1990 the risk of dying fell to that of their age group after 20 years.”
The most recent data, on which the study is based, reveals that children diagnosed in 1990 with ALL, after 20 years’ follow-up, had a cure rate of about 79%, which is slightly lower than the currently acknowledged five-year survival of 83%. And these children were treated at a time when it was still normal to give cranial radiotherapy and when drugs which may damage the heart were given at much higher doses than are now used.
Leukaemia Research is now funding world-class research aimed at tailoring treatment more closely to the individual child’s risk of relapse. This will help to reduce the total amount of treatment given to children with ALL and reduce complications linked to treatment. Parents and ex-patients should be reassured that mortality beyond five years is very small in this study (about 4%) and is likely to be even smaller in children treated more recently than 1990. Parents, patients and doctors should continue to see five years from start of treatment as an important milestone.
With AML late relapses are very uncommon so five-year survival is virtually equivalent to cure.
Ken Campbell says: "If a similar study was done in 20 years, looking at outcomes for children diagnosed in 2008, we would expect the results to be much better."
References
Shah, A., Stiller, C. A., Kenward, M. G., Vincent, T., Eden, O. B., & Coleman, M. P. 2008, "Childhood leukaemia: long-term excess mortality and the proportion 'cured'", Br J Cancer, vol. 99, pp. 219-223.
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