Early Diagnosis of Childhood Cancer

In many countries, cancer is the second leading cause of death in children over 1 year of age, exceeded only by accidents. Annual incidence of all malignant tumors is 12.45 per 100,000 children under 15 years. 

Fortunately, great progress has been made in the treatment of childhood cancer in recent years, to the extent that in the last twenty years, there have been few specialties that can claim therapeutic outcomes comparable to those of pediatric oncology. 

One example is acute leukemia, a disease that 30 years ago was considered inevitably fatal, with occasional, yet unsustainable, temporary remissions. At present, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most frequent childhood cancer, has a five-year survival exceeding 70%, meaning that most patients can be cured.

This Integrated Childhood Illness Management module aims to contribute to the effort to improve the ability of undergraduate and postgraduate medical and nursing students and primary care staff to identify early signs of cancer.