American Cancer Society: Childhood cancer rates up, deaths decline

ATLANTA, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- The American Cancer Society released a report that says childhood cancer cases are up, but in encouraging news, cancer-related deaths are on the decline.

The report estimated the number of new cancer cases and deaths for this year in children and adolescents. In 2014, roughly 15,780 children will be diagnosed with cancer, and 1,960 children will die from cancer. The most common forms of cancer in children are leukemia, cancers of the brain and central nervous system, and lymphoma.

According to the American Cancer Society, 1 in 530 adults between the ages of 20 to 39 is a childhood cancer survivor.

While the number of deaths have declined, largely due to improved surgical methods, radiation, and chemotherapy, it comes at cost to the health of the child, who may have to deal with side effects from these treatments. These could include seizures, weakness in the arms and legs, hormone-related problems, and impaired brain function.

But survival rates have not improved uniformly for all types of cancers. For example, the five-year survival rate for acute lymphocytic leukemia jumped from 57 percent in 1975-1979 to 90 percent in 2003-2009. While there has been progress made in the survival for brain and spinal cord cancers, some subtypes of these cancers, such as DIPG, have a median survival rate of less than a year after diagnosis.

“Progress in childhood cancer has been dramatic for some sites, but we cannot let that blind us from the fact that progress has been disappointingly slow for other sites, and that cancer remains the second leading cause of death in children,” said Otis Brawley, the American Cancer Society's chief medical officer.

[American Cancer Society]