September is Child Cancer Awareness Month and with more families being touched by cancer, it is important to be educated and be able to educate our families.
Cancer is relatively rare in children. Most cancers (98%) develop in adults, especially in people past middle age. About one out of every six adults develop cancer during his or her lifetime, while about one out of every 330 children under age 20 develop cancer.
At the same time, however, there is a lot of research going on to discover new treatments for childhood cancer. This ongoing research has greatly improved the overall survival rate for children with cancer, which is now 80%.
What is childhood cancer?
Cancer begins when normal cells in begin to change and grow uncontrollably. In most types of cancer, these cells form a mass called a tumor. A tumor can be benign (noncancerous) or malignant (cancerous, meaning it can spread to other parts of the body). In leukemia, a cancer of the blood and blood-forming organs that starts in the bone marrow, these abnormal cells rarely form a solid tumor, but instead crowd other types of cells in the bone marrow. This prevents the production of normal red blood cells, otherotherwhite blood cells, and platelets (part of the blood needed for clotting).
Cancer in children most often forms in the parts of their bodies that are still growing and changing, such as their blood system, brain, and kidneys. In general, cancers that occur in children are not ?caused? by the same things as adult cancers. For this reason, they grow and spread differently than adult cancers.
Types of childhood cancer
Childhood cancer is a general term used to describe a range of cancer types and noncancerous tumors found in children. Below are the most common types of cancer in children 14 and under. For more information on each type, select a name below.
- Leukemia (accounts for about 31% of childhood cancer cases)
- Brain and central nervous system (CNS) tumors (21%), including tumors of the spinal cord
- Neuroblastoma (7.1%), a tumor of immature nerve cells that often starts in the adrenal glands, which are located on top of the kidneys and are part of the body?s endocrine (hormonal) system
- Wilms Tumor (5.2%), a type of kidney tumor
- Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (4.3%) and Hodgkin Lymphoma (3.8%), cancers that begin in the lymph system
- Rhabdomyosarcoma (3.3%), a type of tumor that begins in the striated muscle, which are the skeletal voluntary muscles that people can control. Other, rare soft tissue sarcomas also occur.
- Retinoblastoma (2.6%), an eye tumor
- Osteosarcoma (2.5%) and Ewing Family of Tumors (1.6%), tumors that begin in the bone
- Germ Cell Tumors, rare tumors that begin in the testicles in boys and ovaries in girls
- Pleuropulmonary Blastoma, a rare lung cancer that begins in the chest
- Hepatoblastoma and hepatocellular carcinoma
Get involved volunteer some of your time to a cancer ward, many children faced with cancer seek a friendly face to comfort them, you can be that face.
heres a link to a great website www.childrensart.org