As most cancers occur in middle-aged or older adults, only a very small proportion of the overall radiotherapy workload relates to children and young people. As there is a wide spectrum of ...
MoreAs most cancers occur in middle-aged or older adults, only a very small proportion of the overall radiotherapy workload relates to children and young people. As there is a wide spectrum of different cancer types in this age group, not only is paediatric cancer uncommon overall but each individual type is very rare. There are many ways in which to deliver radiotherapy, including advanced photon techniques, proton beam therapy, brachytherapy, and molecular radiotherapy. For these reasons, the care of children and young people requiring radiotherapy is limited to a small number of highly specialist centres. Delivery of high-quality paediatric radiotherapy requires a multiprofessional team including radiation or clinical oncologists, therapy radiographers, physicists, dosimetrists, anaesthetists, and play specialists. This team has to interact very closely with the wider paediatric and adolescent oncology multidisciplinary team, which includes oncologists, surgeons with different anatomical expertise, radiologists, and pathologists. Children, with their developing tissues and organs, are more susceptible to long-term radiation-induced complications, including second cancers, than adults. The art of paediatric radiotherapy, therefore, is to select treatment approaches which offer the maximum chance of cure while minimizing the risk of adverse effects. Careful teamwork, peer review of radiotherapy planning, and quality assurance within a clinical trial framework offer the best chances of achieving this balance. This book covers all these aspects, highlighting the need for highly specialist teams with the extensive knowledge and the broad skillset required to offer children and young people the best possible treatments.
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