Late Effects, Quality of Life and a Vertical Network (Project I)

Author: Dr. med. Ralf Herold, Last modification: 2007/09/27

Health-Related Quality of Life and Late Effects for Children and Young Adults suffering from Cancer

High cure rates bring up the question how quality of life, long term consequences, and the probability of relapses are effected by intense chemotherapy during childhood: In the year 2010 every 250th young adult (between the age of 15 and 45) will be a survivor of a malignant disease during his or her childhood. The use of intensive treatment regimes can bring with it organic long term effects as well as negative effects for a child’s psychological and physical development, all leading to a reduction of the health-related quality of life. Up to now, data on long term consequences and quality of life has only been collected in a few smaller studies; trials done by the GPOH (Gesellschaft für Pädiatrische Onkologie und Hämatologie) also failed to establish a sufficient base level assessment of the quality of life. We still lack some important information, e.g. about the management of mutililation after bone tumours, the problem of infertility after whole body radiotherapy and the courses of palliative therapies. Prior to using measurement tools for health-related quality of life and long term consequences on a wide basis, we launched a pilot project to test their practibility and effectiveness on two groups of patients. Valuable information for this project was gathered by precursing studies, done by cooperating partners to examine other specific questions.

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