[MP3 audio] Joseph Neglia, M.D., M.P.H., explains why researchers expect to see a different set of results from the new CCSS group.

In the 1960s, cancer was basically a death sentence for children. Less than 10 percent survived. Today about 80 percent of children diagnosed with cancer survive at least five years—and many live well into adulthood.

As survival rates began to increase in the early 1980s, University of Minnesota physicians and researchers believed they had a responsibility to track childhood cancer survivors' health.

The Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS) was started at the University in 1993 in hopes of better understanding the long-term effects of cancer therapies on children's health. The CCSS database contains information on more than 14,000 survivors who were diagnosed with cancer between 1970 and 1986, as well as information on about 3,700 siblings for comparison.

In 2007 researchers nationwide began recruiting a second set of participants for the next wave of the study. This group will be composed of another 14,000 survivors who were treated for cancer as children between 1987 and 1999. But until the new group has been recruited and followed for five years, the data for any childhood cancer survivorship studies will continue to come from the study's first cohort.

Because of advances in technology and newer medications developed over the years, many are expecting to see a shift in the types of late effects survivors are experiencing.

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The Growing Up After Cancer section of the Masonic Cancer Center Web site was produced by University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication graduate student Nicole Endres. The section's medical content was written under the advisement of Masonic Cancer Center member Joseph Neglia, M.D., M.P.H.