Top-notch treatment for childhood cancer—close to home

By Jennifer Keates, MD

Jennifer Keates, MD, pediatric oncologist with T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital at Erlanger, is also an assistant professor of pediatrics with the UT College of Medicine Chattanooga. For more information, call Erlanger’s physician referral line at 778-LINK (5465).

New York. Chicago. Atlanta. Memphis. Nashville. What does Chattanooga have in common with these cities?

All of these places—including Chattanooga—offer the same top-notch, cutting-edge treatment for childhood cancers. A child at T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital at Erlanger receives the same treatment for cancer as a child who is being treated in one of our nation’s largest cities or hospitals.

That’s because Children’s Hospital is a member of the Children’s Oncology Group, comprised of more than 200 children’s hospitals around the world. These facilities are dedicated to treating children with cancer through state-of-the-art therapies and the latest clinical trials.

All hospitals in the Children’s Oncology Group follow the same detailed treatment plans—known as protocols—to treat specific types of cancer in children. These protocols are the result of years of tracking thousands of pediatric cancer cases. They offer the best treatment plans available—protocols that improve the chances of surviving childhood cancers.

Cancer patients at T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital, as well as other COG hospitals, participate in dozens of clinical trials every year. Every COG hospital—including T.C. Thompson—shares the results of its research with the entire group. By reporting our findings to a centralized source and pooling our resources and information with other COG hospitals, we are helping to find new treatment therapies for childhood cancers and improving survival rates.

To make sure a child gets the best treatment available with as few ill effects as possible, doctors who specialize in childhood cancers, known as pediatric oncologists, work at T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital. These physicians are part of a treatment team consisting of radiation oncologists, pediatric surgeons, nurses, child life therapists, nutritionists, pathologists, pharmacists, psychologists and other health care professionals who are experts in treating children with cancer.

Planning is key

Each child with cancer has a treatment plan developed specifically for that child. Each treatment plan template is designed by the Children’s Oncology Group’s team of international experts for each different form of childhood cancer, and goes through many layers of federal government and local approval before being offered to a particular child.

Taking into account the child’s general health, age and weight, the type of cancer and stage of the disease, and many other factors, the team prepares a plan that outlines the exact type of treatment, how often the child will receive treatment, and how long it will last. The COG monitors the child’s progress as Children’s Hospital administers the plan and maintains constant quality control measures on the technical aspects before, during and after treatment.

Special treatment

Doctors use different types of treatments—such as surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy or bone marrow transplants—to destroy cancer cells in both adults and children. Depending on the type of cancer, a patient may have one kind of treatment or a combination of treatments, called combination therapy.

But treating children with cancer is much different than treating adults with the disease. Doctors must take into account the impact of treatment on a child’s organs, muscles and bones that are still under development. Moreover, medication requirements for children are much different than the dosages required for adults.