More children surviving cancer

CHICAGO - The move to make cancer treatments gentler for children has paid a double dividend: More kids are surviving than ever before, and without the long-term complications that doomed many of their peers a generation ago, new research shows.

Radiation and chemotherapy have saved countless children from leukemia and other types of cancer, but some of these treatments can damage the heart or other organs, problems that prove fatal years later.

In the 1990s, a push began to try to prevent these "late effects" by giving smaller, more targeted doses of radiation, avoiding certain drugs, and changing the way chemo is given. But doctors worried: Would gentler treatments hurt a child's survival odds? The new study, which tracked more than 34,000 childhood cancer survivors, gives a happy answer: No.

Results were discussed Sunday at an American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago.

"Fifty years ago less than 30 percent of kids would survive childhood cancer but now we know that over 80 percent will," said Greg Armstrong, a doctor with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis.

Garrett and Gatlin Stringer, brothers from Huntsville, Texas, benefited from the change, said their doctor, Michael Rytting at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The boys had acute lymphocytic leukemia. When doctors first described their treatment, "we didn't really ask long-term effects, to be honest, because at the time it was really just kind of day to day," said their mother, Marsha Stringer. Garrett, now 20 was diagnosed at age 7 and is now a 13-year survivor. Gatlin, 14, was diagnosed at age 3 and is 11 years past his treatment.