NEW YORK, July 12, (RTRS): Massage, humor therapy and relaxation don’t seem to make life much easier for children with cancer who go through stressful bone marrow transplants, disappointed researchers said Monday.
Earlier studies, while not clear-cut, had suggested alternative treatment might benefit some adult cancer survivors. Doing yoga, for instance, helped women sleep better and have more energy after breast cancer treatment.
“We believed that we had a therapy that was helpful,” said psychologist Sean Phipps, of St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, who led the government — and foundation-funded study.
But, he said, even state-of-the-art alternative treatment didn’t trump standard supportive care, which includes drugs for nausea and pain as well as psychosocial support for both child and parent.
Phipps said stem cell transplants, from the bone marrow or blood, are some of the toughest treatments for children with cancer. He said they often experience pain, have restricted diets, and are kept largely isolated due to a high risk of infections. “It’s not a picnic,” he said.
To test whether alternative treatment could take the edge off the stress, Phipps and colleagues randomly assigned 178 children to one of three groups. One group received only standard care; another also had massages and humor therapy; in the third group, parents also got massages and were taught how to be more relaxed around their kids.
Using a common measure of quality of life in patients undergoing aggressive treatments, the researchers then tested how the kids fared in each group.
“We failed to demonstrate that our interventions changed those outcomes,” said Phipps. One possible explanation is that standard care was already doing a good job of helping the children, he added, stressing that more research is needed.
Dr K. Scott Baker, who directs the Survivorship Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, said he was surprised by the new findings, which are published in the journal Cancer.
While they don’t jibe with work in adults, he said in an e-mail to Reuters Health, “this study had a very rigorous study design. Many times what we perceive to be true, or of benefit, is not always the case.”
“There are things that they can do to make them feel better,” Phipps said. “You don’t have to sit back and be passive.”
Meanwhile, Mepact for treating bone cancer in children/young adults and adolescents has been refused for acceptance by NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence). Takeda, United Kingdom discloses that in its draft assessment the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has rejected using Mepact in treatments of bone cancer (osteosarcoma) in children through young adults.
The announcement was made after NICE rejected the use of Mepact because of its staunch standards pertaining to being cost effective which currently does not include the evaluations of rare, ultra orphan diseases and regardless of the evidence that Mepact does fit many of the standards for “Deviating From The Threshold” by the NICE Citizen’s Council examined by the board of NICE on May 20, 2009.
This declared that if a treatment in dispute does have the ability to save life, the patients which are children, and the intervening will sustain a greater effect on children’s families and the disease is greatly critical and or rare, then this medication is of added benefit to society and should not be made to adhere current cost effective standards of NICE.
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Cancer survivors: More than 1.5 million cancer survivors in the United States are parents living with children younger than age 18, according to a study published online today in the journal Cancer.
The researchers hope this figure — calculated for the first time — will help make health care providers more aware of these families and provide them with additional support.
“I think people have vastly underestimated the number of children who are affected by a parent’s cancer,” Dr Paula Rauch, who was not involved in the study, told Reuters Health.
“It has been easier to measure the number of people who die from cancer, and often people still imagine that most cancer deaths and cancer survivors are elderly and don’t have dependent children,” added Rauch, who is founder and director of the Parenting At a Challenging Time, or PACT, program at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.
Dr Kathryn Weaver of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and colleagues analyzed data from 13,385 cancer survivors who participated in US national health surveys conducted between 2000 and 2007.
The analysis revealed that an estimated 18 percent of newly diagnosed cancer survivors and 14 percent of all US cancer survivors live with one or more of their minor children.
Scaling these numbers up to reflect the entire US population, the authors calculated that about 1.58 million cancer survivors in the US are living with about 2.85 million children. An estimated 562,000 kids are living with a parent in the early phases of cancer treatment and recovery.
The figures are likely an underestimate of the true number of cancer survivors living with minors, the researchers say, because the study did not include survivors who live with grandchildren, nieces and nephews, or other young family members.
Weaver and her colleagues say that parents who are cancer survivors and their families may need extra support, but that talking to patients about family and home life is often not part of the treatment process.
For example, parents with cancer might have extra stress from worrying about the possibility of not being able to see their children grow up. Spouses of survivors often have to take on the roles of both parents during treatment, and the cost of treatment can put strain on the family. In addition, the authors say, children of survivors might need counseling or extra attention at school.
For health care providers, “the most important thing is to screen all members of the family and find out — what are their issues?” Weaver said. “Some families certainly may be doing very well. Others may have multiple family members that are struggling.”