Vijayawada: Paediatric cancer is increasing in Andhra Pradesh, along with the country and across the globe.
In India, cancer has become the 9th commonest cause for death among children aged 5-14 years. In 2017, doctors noticed that childhood cancer cases reached 40 per cent in the total cancer cases registered in AP. The mortality rate of children is also increasing, along with the rise in paediatric cancer.
The government and the doctors are concentrating on reducing death of children infected by cancer but it was found that many of the paediatricians do not have sufficient knowledge on paediatric cancer.
Sometimes, parents are identifying abnormalities in their children and rushing to the hospitals but most of the paediatricians are not able to diagnose the symptoms due to the lack of awareness.
The Childhood Cancer Incidence (CCI) is generally expressed per million (pm) children. For both boys and girls, general childhood cancers are leukaemia, lymphomas, sympathetic nervous system (SNS) tumours, renal tumours, retinoblastoma, hepatic tumours, bone tumours, central nervous system (CNS) tumours, soft tissue sarcomas and germ cell tumours.
In general, smoking, consumption of alcohol may have an impact on cancer in adults but in children, the major factor for cancer is genetic.
If family members have a history of cancer, like grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, along with parents who have had cancer, they have to make sure that the family is genetically counselled.
Major hospitals will take the details of the genetical history and those hospital doctors will talk about the risk that their children will have, after certain blood tests of the relatives. Then one can take preventive measures. A most common cancer in children is blood cancer.
A consultant radiation oncologist, Apollo Hospitals, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad, Dr P. Vijay Karan Reddy says that in MNJ Cancer Hospital, they noticed around 40 per cent paediatric cancer, i.e 15,000-20,000 cancer cases in 2017. He further said that the best way to prevent cancer in children was to know the family history.
“Parents should go for genetic counselling and the paediatricians need to be more aware of cancer among children. To educate doctors is more important than the public. In LV Prasad Eye Institute, we noticed that incidence of eye cancer was more among children.” said Dr Reddy.
MNJ Institute of Oncology, Hyderabad, director N. Jayalatha said that the rise of cancer cases among children was notice in the last three years.
