I Am a Child, Not a Case!
Children with retinoblastoma are much more than a medical specimen. To achieve complete cure, we must consider them as a whole person, not just an eye or a body to be treated. A single word can completely change our focus.
Children with retinoblastoma are much more than a medical specimen. To achieve complete cure, we must consider them as a whole person, not just an eye or a body to be treated. A single word can completely change our focus.
Childhood cancer is the leading disease killer of children in developed countries; second most common among children aged 1 to 15 in developing countries. With statistics and insights from parents and survivors, we explore the realities around the world.
The Canadian Retinoblastoma Research Advisory Board is working with patient families to guide future research priorities. Engaging parents and survivors can lead to improved health outcomes. Read on and sign up today.
Expert retinoblastoma pathology identifies cancer spread to outer layers of the eye or the optic nerve, guiding post-operative care. Accurate, timely pathology is key to long-term survival when a child has advanced cancer.
Being the parent of a child with retinoblastoma, or living with the effects of this cancer, can be frustrating. We look at a few challenges and ways we can help the medical community advance care.
Have you ever wondered what happens in a child’s eye during retinoblastoma treatment? We explore four of the most common eye-saving treatments here. Below each, you will find a link to further information that includes advantages, disadvantages, side effects and questions to ask the doctor.
Retinoblastoma is staged to help doctors describe the degree of cancer in a child’s body, define potential for cure / eye salvage, determine best treatments, and compare impact of different therapies. Each eye is staged separately to define potential for safely saving the eye and vision.
Retinoblastoma specialists agree that early diagnosis of eye cancer is a child’s best hope of survival, retaining some vision or their eye. Yet around the world, thousands of children die, and more than half of children who are cured lose at least one eye. We consider the potential and limitations of six solutions to improve early diagnosis.
We are looking forward to One Rb World and SIOP 2017 in Washington D.C. this October. Read about the 2016 One Rb World meeting and International Society of Paediatric Oncology World Congress in this blog mini series, originally shared later last year.
A special session at the 2016 World Congress of Paediatric Oncology was hosted in memoriam of Alfred G. Knudson, Jr., MD, PhD, who died in July. Knudson developed his “two-hit hypothesis” after years of observing children with retinoblastoma, and this now forms the backbone of cancer genetics. The session focused on most effective staging for retinoblastoma, identifying and treating high risk children.