Abstract

IntroductionThe growing number of survivors of childhood cancer, with many years of life ahead, demonstrates the increasing clinical and public health relevance of investigating the risks of social and socioeconomic impairment after a childhood cancer diagnosis and the life-saving treatment. To enrich understanding of the mental, social and socioeconomic difficulties that childhood cancer survivors may face during their life-course, identify particularly vulnerable survivors and overcome the limitations of previous research, we initiated the Socioeconomic Consequences in Adult Life after Childhood Cancer in Scandinavia (SALiCCS) research programme.MethodsThis Nordic cross-border research programme is a collaboration between the Danish Cancer Society, the Finnish Cancer Registry and Karolinska Institutet to investigate a broad range of mental, social and socioeconomic conditions in long-term childhood cancer survivors in Denmark, Finland and Sweden. SALiCCS is based on a registry-based matched cohort design, comprising five-year survivors of cancer diagnosed at ages 0–19 years (1971–2008 in Denmark, 1971–2009 in Finland, 1971–2011 in Sweden), age-, sex- and country-matched population comparisons and sibling comparisons who were followed over time. Outcomes of interest included mental disorders, educational achievements, employment and profession, family life and the need of social security benefits. Individual-level data linkage among various national registries provided the data for the research programme.ResultsThe SALiCCS core population comprises 21,292 five-year survivors, 103,303 population comparisons and 29,644 siblings as a second comparison group. The most common diagnoses in survivors were central nervous system tumours, leukaemias and lymphomas.DiscussionSALiCCS is the largest, most comprehensive population-based research initiative in this field, based on high-quality registry data with minimal risk of bias. The findings will be informative for evidence-based survivorship care targeting not only somatic late effects but also psychosocial impairments.

Highlights

  • The growing number of survivors of childhood cancer, with many years of life ahead, demonstrates the increasing clinical and public health relevance of investigating the risks of social and socioeconomic impairment after a childhood cancer diagnosis and the life-saving treatment

  • Childhood cancer is of increasing public health concern, as approximately 35,000 new cases are diagnosed yearly in children and adolescents in Europe, and about 500,000 European Union citizens are childhood cancer survivors, with complex needs for medical and psycho-social care [1]

  • The SALiCCS research programme is based on a registry-based matched cohort design

Read more

Summary

Introduction

The growing number of survivors of childhood cancer, with many years of life ahead, demonstrates the increasing clinical and public health relevance of investigating the risks of social and socioeconomic impairment after a childhood cancer diagnosis and the life-saving treatment. As a result of the increasing survival and lack of primary preventive measures [2, 3, 9], the number of childhood cancer survivors in society is growing steadily. This growing population is at risk of long-term health consequences (i.e. late effects) induced by the cancer or the intensive treatment at a young age [8, 10,11,12]. Many survivors are well after therapy, a wide spectrum of long-term adverse health consequences in childhood cancer survivors has been described [8, 12,13,14,15,16,17,18], indicating higher risks of a broad range of somatic and mental late effects, including second cancers [8, 12, 17, 18], higher overall mortality rates [12, 16], severe chronic health conditions [8, 12,13,14,15], mental disorders [19, 20] and use of antidepressants [21]

Methods
Results
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call