| dc.description.abstract | Background: Due to the growing and relatively high survival rate in childhood cancer, more emphasis is put on the long-term effects of the disease and its treatment. One of the most common and distressing symptoms experienced by children with cancer, both during treatment and into adulthood, is fatigue. An extreme amount of fatigue can result in reduced quality of life. Strikingly, merely a few studies actually applied a validated instrument to assess fatigue. From the few studies that assess fatigue after treatment of childhood cancer, there is hardly any report on fatigue during early clinical remission.
Aim: To assess the level of perceived fatigue in children and adolescents with cancer during the early remission phase after treatment.
Methods: For this cross-sectional study, children and adolescents diagnosed with cancer at ages between 2-18 years, entering their remission phase from the outpatient clinic of the Princess Maxima Centrum (PMC) for pediatric oncology were included. The primary study parameter for this study is perceived fatigue, assessed with the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory Multidimensional Fatigue Scale (PedsQL MFS). The PedsQL MFS is an instrument designed to measure child and parent proxy perceptions of fatigue in pediatric patients.
Results: A total of 71 patients were included in this study. No significant differences in perceived fatigue were found in children with cancer during early clinical remission compared to healthy controls(p=0.155). Only 6.8% of the total fatigue can be explained by patient characteristics such as age, gender, type of cancer, type of treatment and disease duration.
Conclusion: Post-cancer fatigue in children and adolescents is not more common than fatigue in a healthy population.
Implications of key findings: As subjective fatigue seems not lowered during the early remission phase in pediatric survivors of cancer, future research should assess fatigue with a longer observation time. The high prevalence of chronic fatigue in adult cancer survivors and the coherent impact of the fatigue, illustrates the relevance of additional research to allow for early detection, preventing chronic fatigue at a later stage and simultaneously establishing improved interventions, in pediatric cohorts. | |
