Children with cancer surviving longer: Study

More children with cancer are surviving than in the past because of advances in treatment, but that doesn’t mean the battle is over for all of them, the Canadian Cancer Society says.
For all childhood cancers combined, 82 per cent of Canadian kids are living at least five years after diagnosis, a jump of 11 per cent in the last 15 years, the society said yesterday in releasing its 2008 estimated national statistics on the disease.
“We know that childhood cancer, fortunately, is a rare disease, but it is the leading cause of disease-related death in children over one month, second only to accidents,” Heather Logan, the society’s director of cancer control policy, told a news conference.
“When you look at childhood survival … it shows us the advances we have been able to make,” said Logan, noting that from 1985 to 1988, 71 out of every 100 Canadian children with cancer survived five years. That number rose to 82 in every 100 kids diagnosed between 1999 and 2003.