Adolescent And Young Adult Cancer

Although 5-year survival rates have increased for multiple cancer types among adolescents and young adults, little or no improvement has been observed for some common malignancies in this population, according to findings published in Cancer.

Adolescents and young adults with cancer who lived in rural areas and farther from the reporting hospital appeared more likely to be diagnosed with later-stage disease and have shorter survival, according to a study published in Cancer.

With today’s instantaneous access to information with the mere swipe of a finger, navigating adolescence and young adulthood has never been more challenging.

Multiple surveys of AYA patients and several guidelines defining best practice have included an AYA-friendly or “age-appropriate” environment as an essential element of care. Although patients of all ages deserve healing health care environments, there are logical reasons for the preeminence of this aspect of care for AYAs compared with patients of other ages. A dedicated AYA space facilitates the achievement of the other key elements of age-appropriate care, as well.

Going through cancer during transitional adolescent and young adult years can present additional social, financial and mental health challenges that add to the stressors of diagnosis and treatment.

Use of a modified pediatric protocol produced favorable outcomes for adolescents and young adults with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, according to retrospective study results presented at Society of Hematologic Oncology Annual Meeting.

Adults who received radiation therapy during childhood for abdominal and pelvic cancers appeared more likely than the general population to experience body composition abnormalities and worse cardiometabolic outcomes, study results showed.

Young adult cancer survivors had disproportionally higher rates of e-cigarette use across nearly all demographic subgroups compared with their peers without a cancer history, according to results of a survey-based research letter published in JAMA Oncology.

“Multiple gaps exist in the routine cardiovascular care of the cancer survivor, especially around primary prevention efforts and surveillance for incident cardiovascular disease [CVD],” Steven Philips, MD, PhD, cardiology fellow at UT Southwestern Medical Center, and Vlad G. Zaha, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the center’s division of cardiology, wrote in a column for Cardiology Today.

All-cause and cancer-specific mortality rates have declined overall among adolescent and young adult cancer survivors during the past 4 decades, according to results of a retrospective study published in Journal of the National Cancer Institute.