Pediatric Cancer Essay examples

Specific Purpose: To convince the audience that childhood cancer is more common than believed, and that action should be taken to increase awareness and funding for research.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is the number one worldwide organization for children's cancer and other serious childhood diseases. “St. Jude has helped improve the survival rate of childhood cancer from 20 to 80 percent”(Young). With your help the families of the children with illnesses pay absolutely nothing throughout their time and stay at St. Jude, making their child's condition and health their only and number one priority (About St. Jude’s Research Hospital). The amount of money that is donated to this hospital benefits not only the patients there, but convalescent’s all around the globe. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is an organization in which you should donate your money because all of the money goes into paying for the patients’ care and stay, the breakthroughs that they make are shared so doctors everywhere can help more children, and they have improved the survival rate of children’s cancer.

According to the American Cancer Society, there are sixteen major types of childhood cancers and over 100 subtypes. Leukemia and Lymphoma cancer are the most common cancers that children get at a young age. Everyday forty-six kids are diagnose with childhood cancer and seven children die every day. Childhood cancer kills more kids than Cystic Fibrosis, AIDS, and asthma combined! The worst part about childhood cancer is that the treatment side affects can last a lifetime for these kids. People do not understand that childhood cancer only gets a small percentage of the budget for all cancers. National Cancer Institute budget is around $4.9 billion and only 4% of that sum goes towards childhood cancer.

Through the study, I have found out that there is minimum research in pediatric cancer and many parents from poor families find it difficult to pay for medical fee. In addition, funding for research will be effective in curbing the effects of cancer in children even as they transit to adulthood.

Every 3 minutes a child under the age of 15 is diagnosed with cancer worldwide. (150,000 p.a.) 1

Children all around the world have cancer.Most of them survive because of treatment.Today more people are trying to find ways to cure cancer and every day we are getting better at finding the cure.

Cancer, the leading cause of death by disease past infancy among children in the United States, causes an estimate of 15,780 children to be diagnosed with the disease and of that same number, 1,960 will die from the disease in the United States (Cancer in Children and Adolescents ). A variety of cancerous diseases contributes to causes which can end a child's life as soon as it appeared. A leading charity organization, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, has helped push the overall cancer survival rate from 20% to more than 80% in the last 50 years since it first opened. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a charity centered around helping people, is a non-profit charity that you should donate to because

Childhood cancer is two of the most devastating words any parent can hear regarding their child. A child that was diagnosed with cancer in the early 1960s rarely survived and typically led to death. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital understood this concern. When the hospital was created the childhood cancer survival rate was less than 20%. Today, through research and discoveries the rate has raised to 80%.

With the aim to raise awareness, support and push a movement and belief that one day pediatric cancer patients can be cured, Penn State students will gather for this cause. These students will not let cancer win, which is why they are not going to rest.

The Article from CDC explains that Cancer in children is difficult to prove due to cancer being rare in children. With different forms of cancers in children can be caused from different factors in the environment. Also cancers in children have become the leading cause of death in children. “Studies have determined that

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is one of the most common childhood cancer, but also, one of the most curable. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is a blood cancer that affects the white blood cells which causes them to build up in the liver, spleen and lymph nodes. (St. Jude's research hospital) Another case, is about a toddler, named Mark, who wasn’t even two years old, at the time and had developed a slight limp. At first, the doctor’s were not concerned and had told his mother, Rita, that he would get better over time. But, she was not convinced, she was later referred to a specialist, who performed a CT scan. Which, later showed a tumor in Mark’s head. “The family received a referral and arrived at St. Jude in January 2010. At St. Jude, further testing was done and a discovery was made: Mark’s tumor was actually a very rare type of bone cancer, in the Ewing sarcoma family of tumors- not brain cancer as originally believed” (StJude.org) If it wasn’t for St. Jude or the mother then Mark may not have lived and be over five years cancer free. “It’s like a miracle. Everything is given to the family here for free without any expectation,” Rita said…. “I wish every nation in the world would have a St.Jude,” said Rita. “That way, everyone would have a chance” “ (StJude.org). This just shows how much it means to the families and the children. The place that

Out of 100,000 children 32.1 cancer diagnoses occur in the age group 0-14, 138.6 occur in the 15-39 age group, and 2,053.8 occur in 40 and older (cancer.gov). Pediatric cancer, being so rare, makes research and development hard to fund because there are not many eligible participants for each specific trial. This creates a “Catch 22” by having a good societal support system, yet not having enough “return-on-investment” (Milne). Pediatric cancer is the leading cause of death in children after accidents, however the amount of deaths has lower drastically in recent years. The mortality rate as a whole has decreased by fifty percent in the last thirty years, however for patients with cancers other than lymphoma or leukemia the mortality rate has not declined since 1996 (Analysis of the National Cancer Institute’s Investment). Lymphoma and leukemia are the most common cancers that children are diagnosed with, but there are many more that can occur that need new research in order to discover ways to decrease the current mortality rate. In 1960 it was discovered that leukemia could be treated by “combination chemotherapy and dose intensity” this brought the curability up from 10% before this discovery to 80% by the 1990s (Norris and Adamson). Although this treatment has been successful for leukemia patients, the most common of childhood cancers, it is not as successful with other types of cancer. There are currently clinical trials that take place to begin trying to find treatments or cure for pediatric cancer, however because of lack of funding many of the trials do not continue or never really take off. Due to the lack of funding and efforts put forth into research for pediatric cancer more the 2,500 children die in America every year (thetruth365.org). Children diagnosed with cancer deserve more work to be put into finding a cure so they can go on to live long, happy

As established in the National Cancer Institute, “Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide for children and adolescents in America, accounting for more than 91,250 children that lose their lives to this disease” (National Cancer Institute). Cancer is not considered a terminal illness, but more of a chronic illness because of the intense treatment that the individual has to endure. As a result of this treatment the chances of survival for children suffering from pediatric cancer has increased around 80 percent. The increment in the survival rate has made it possible for many parents to not have to go through the acceptance that they are about to lose their child to a terminal illness, but have coping strategies that will make them adapt to the fear of the reoccurrence of that illness. This illness has a great impact on the patient as well as the family because not only do they have to adapt to this illness physically, but also mentally. Research has shown that there are both short term and long term effects that come into effect when the child is both in treatment and also years after the treatment. The type of cancers that these adolescents have to endure range from leukemia, brain tumors and other cancerous tumors that have appeared in recent medical studies. These tumors can either be benignant, an acute case that is non-cancerous or malignant, a cancerous case that will need intense treatment over an extended period of time.While many would say there is more of a

When a parent takes their child to the doctor the last thing they want to hear is that their child has cancer. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for a child to be diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, also known as ALL. Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia is one of the most common forms of childhood cancer, and “makes up approximately 25% of cancer diagnoses among children under 15 years old” (3). Children under five years of age are at the most risk of developing ALL. Since it is an acute form of cancer once the onset has begun the disease quickly begins to worsen, therefore patients must seek treatment as soon as possible. “ALL is different than other diseases in that it is not just a single disease but also rather a group of related diseases with different subtypes”(1). This uniqueness causes the treatment of ALL to depend on the subtypes the patient has, therefore each

Cancer, one of the most feared words in our vocabulary of this time, especially in childhood (Druker 1). Most people when thinking of “childhood cancer” envision very young children, although a “Nation Institute of Health Policy concerning inclusion of children in clinical research defines children as being younger than twenty-one years of age while the Food and Drug Administration considers children to be fifteen years and younger” (Ries 158). That being said, most cancers incidence peak among children occurs during the first year of life (Gurney 149). Some of the most well-known nationwide childhood cancers are leukemia, brain cancer, and other central nervous system cancers (oeconline 1). In conjunction, “the side effects of treatment,