小児がん治療の現状

Cancer is the popular disease in adult and it is rare in childhood. In addition, majority of thechildhood cancer is sarcomas and early detection is difficult. The childhood cancer is extremelysensitive to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. By recent advance of the treatment of the childhoodcancer, around 70% of the patients can survive for long time. The childhood cancer progresses tothe whole body easily but react to chemotherapy well. Since a side effect of the anticancer drug ismild, the child with cancer is easy to perform chemotherapy. The radiotherapy suppresses theproliferation of the cancer cells. The side effect of radiotherapy is reduced by dividing it.Although removing tumor by the operation is important, multimodal therapy combined withchemotherapy and radiotherapy results in better outcome. Hematopoietic stem cell transplantationhas been considered for the intractable patient. There are allograft and autograft. Hematopoieticstem cell transplantation is treatment which has some complications, so it is necessary tomake carefull decision about indication and time. It is the times when around 70% of the childhoodcancer patients can be alive, so an effort for reducing an adverse late effects is demanded.