To address the ongoing medical needs of survivors of childhood cancer, it is essential to know how many such survivors are living in the population at a given time; this is known as the prevalence of childhood cancer survivors. The Australian Childhood Cancer Registry collects information on all children younger than 15 years diagnosed with cancer in Australia since 1983. It was therefore possible to count childhood cancer survivors who were diagnosed with cancer from 1983 onwards and were alive on 31 December 2018.
The estimated number of childhood cancer survivors was 17 468. This means that among every 1000 Australians younger than 50 years, on average there is at least 1 person who had been diagnosed with childhood cancer within the past 36 years.
The results also showed that the number of childhood cancer survivors who were diagnosed within only the past 5 years increased by 80% over the 30 years between 1988 and 2018. Part of this large increase in the number of 5-year survivors can be attributed to improvements in treatment for childhood cancer over the past three to four decades.
This study is an example of how data collected by a national cancer registry can be used for the benefit of patients with childhood cancer. Based on the results of the study, it is expected that the number of childhood cancer survivors will continue to increase in the future. Information derived from the collected data helps with planning for the demands on medical care and other services.
The full publication, led by Adjunct Associate Professor Danny Youlden from Cancer Council Queensland, is available at https://doi.org/10.1002/pbc.30383.