The report said that: “During 1999-2014, brain cancer replaced leukaemia as the most common cancer causing death among children and adolescents aged 1-19 years, accounting for three out of 10 cancer deaths in 2014”.
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New government data shows that brain cancer is now the deadliest childhood cancer in the USA, ahead of leukemia, a result of improved leukemia treatment and a frustrating lack of progress on brain cancer.
Age and Cancer Death Rates All 5-year age groups (1-4, 5-9, 10-14, and 15-19) experienced declines in cancer death rates during the 1999-2014 period.
Sally Curtin of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said, “I think most people, when they think of childhood cancer, think of leukemia”.
“This report is a stark reminder that we must re-double our national efforts to find new and more effective treatments for the thousands of children diagnosed each year with pediatric brain tumors”. Brain cancer or brain tumor is a mass or growth due to abnormal cells present in brain or near the brain. Additionally, brain cancer is hard to treat with medication because the brain has something called the “blood-brain barrier”, a sort of firewall around the brain that prevents some medications from reaching the brain at all.
Radiation is another option, but it can have “devastating effects” on a child’s developing brain, according to Kung. In 1999, leukemia was the leading killer of childhood cancer. Percent distributions of cancer deaths among children and adolescents aged 1-19 years are shown by anatomical site for 1999 and 2014.
Cancer death rate for white children and adolescents was 17% lower in 2014 (2.36) than in 1999 (2.85), and it was 23% lower for those who were black (3.01 in 1999 and 2.32 in 2014). They say that it is not caused by an increase in brain cancer rates.
“The declines were broad, across all the age groups, males and females, for both white and black children”, Curtin said. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics; 2016.
Overall, the cancer death rate for children and teens dropped 20 percent over the 15 years included in the study. By 2014, those numbers had reversed. Surgery, a standard treatment for many cancers, may not get the entire brain tumor – or it may not be possible at all. This is good news, as it implies that doctors were able to treat efficiently and cure a large number of leukemia cases. “We’re making progress, but we are in no way satisfied yet”. New treatment developments are likely responsible for the overall drop in death rates through the years.
Bone Cancers: Child bone cancers are of two types.
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The findings were reported September 16 in the CDC’s NCHS Data Brief.
