Childhood/AYA Cancer

Jesus Cepero, PhD, RN, highlights the value of holistic care environments in pediatric oncology.

Linda Laskowski-Jones, MS, APRN, ACNS-BC, CEN, NEA-BC, FAAN, discusses how oncology nurse leaders can help improve working environments for their staff.

Although oncology nurses are trained to show empathy and offer support, they lack the resources to adequately care for patients with acute mental health problems.

Each month, we take a look back at the most popular Oncology Nursing News® stories. Here are the top 5 stories from September 2022.

The FDA has approved sodium thiosulfate to protect the hearing of pediatric patients who are at least 1 year old and are receiving cisplatin-based treatments.

Innovative strategies are needed to ensure that adolescents and young adults with cancer who prefer to die at home are able to make that choice.

Ibrutinib is now an FDA-approved treatment for patients aged 1 year or older who have chronic graft-versus-host-disease. Prescription warnings include bleeding and cardiac problems, infections, high blood pressure, a decrease in blood cell count, and tumor lysis syndrome.

Pediatric oncology nurses and social workers routinely collaborate not only in the biopsychosocial assessment of families’ psychosocial needs and distress, but in developing interventions that can improve a patient’s and family’s quality of life while in pediatric cancer treatment and in survivorship.

A single-center study evaluated the efficacy of saline flush in pediatric patients with central venous access devices.

Updated data from the phase 3 BELIEVE trial revealed a sustained reduction in the need for red blood cell transfusions among patients with β-thalassemia who received treatment with luspatercept-aamt.

Heavily pretreated pediatric and young adult patients with relapsed or refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia maintained response with tisagenlecelucel according to long-term follow-up data from the phase 2 ELIANA trial.

Standard chemotherapy plus sorafenib achieved clinical benefit in pediatric patients with FLT3-ITD–positive acute myeloid leukemia.

The rise of social media platforms has helped foster a community for adolescent and young adult patients with cancer.

Azacitidine (Vidaza) is now FDA approved for pediatric patients with newly diagnosed myelomonocytic leukemia.

Michelle Mollica, PhD, MPH, RN, OCN, senior advisor in the NCI Office of Cancer Survivorship, discusses different long-term care considerations for nurses caring for patients with cancer.

Childhood cancer survivors may benefit from high-risk obstetric care despite being able to conceive and give birth safely.

A comprehensive literature review underscores research gaps into optimal exercise regimens for childhood cancer survivors.

Anticipating these stressors and implementing specific strategies can help ease the distress and vulnerability felt by children and adolescents.

The FDA approved injectable technetium Tc 99m tilmanocept (Lymphoseek), a radiopharmaceutical agent that targets lymphatic mapping and guiding for sentinel lymph node biopsies (SLNB), for use in pediatric patients with melanoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, and other solid tumors.

Adding the antibody-drug conjugate to the frontline treatment of patients with pediatric high-risk Hodgkin lymphoma resulted in favorable clinical outcomes.

The United States Preventative Services Task Force now recommends colorectal cancer screening to start at 45 years old.

The FDA has granted a rare pediatric disease designation to the p-STAT3 inhibitor WP1066 for the treatment of patients with ependymoma, a rare type of tumor that can develop in the brain or the spinal cord.

Overall, 3 objective responses were recorded from 16 eligible patients in the neuroblastoma cohort, which met the protocol-defined efficacy end point.

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network has issued guidelines for the management of children with a rare type of kidney cancer referred to as Wilms Tumor, or nephroblastoma.

Parents of pediatric patients with cancer were more likely to believe COVID-19 misinformation than parents of children without cancer.

The FDA has approved crizotinib (Xalkori) for the treatment of pediatric patients 1 year of age and older and young adults with ALK-positive relapsed or refractory, systemic anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL).

“But our study is pointing to new genes to consider. For example, we found that the BRCA2 gene, typically associated with adult breast and ovarian cancer, may also somehow influence the susceptibility of pediatric RMS.”

The FDA approved pralsetinib (Gavreto) for adults and children aged 12 or older with advanced or metastatic RET-mutant medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) who need systemic therapy or RET fusion-positive thyroid cancer who require systemic therapy and are radioactive iodine-refractory.

The FDA has granted an accelerated approval to naxitamab-gqgk (Danyelza) for use in combination with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor as a treatment for pediatric patients 1 year of age and older and adult patients with relapsed/refractory high-risk neuroblastoma in the bone or bone marrow who have demonstrated a partial response, minor response, or stable disease to prior treatment.