Our Approach

At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center we treat more children and young adults with cancer than any other institution in the world. Our Pediatric Disease Management Team includes more than 30 full-time physicians and surgeons, each of whom has expertise in one or more areas of pediatric oncology.

The Center's physicians and scientists have pioneered many pacesetting therapeutic regimens that have made possible the remarkable progress in treating many infants, children, teenagers, and young adults with cancer. Today, more than 70 percent of children diagnosed with cancer are cured. Childhood leukemia, for example -- a disease from which almost all children died in the 1960s, and from which half died in the 1980s -- can now be cured in more than 80 percent of children.

Cancer and Children

Although rare, cancer remains the major cause of death from disease in children after the newborn period. Each year in the United States, more children die of cancer than of asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, congenital abnormalities, and AIDS combined. The kinds of cancers that occur in children are different from those seen in adults. Cancers in children originate in the cells that grow to form blood, nerve, muscle, and bone. Leukemias, brain and other nervous-system tumors, lymphomas, bone cancers, soft-tissue sarcomas, kidney cancers, eye cancers, and adrenal-gland cancers are the most common cancers in children. In contrast, skin, prostate, breast, lung, and colorectal cancers are the most frequent cancers in adults.

The most common childhood malignancy is acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), which accounts for almost one-third of all childhood cancers. Tumors of the central nervous system are the second most common cancers in children. Neuroblastoma is the most common solid tumor in children outside the brain. Other cancers in children include Wilms' tumor of the kidney; retinoblastoma of the eye; rhabdomyosarcomas, which affect developing muscle; and osteosarcoma and Ewing's sarcoma, two types of primary bone cancer. Most types of cancer in children are treated with specific combinations of cancer drugs known as chemotherapy, and may also require surgery or radiation therapy. Recently, several biological agents and immunotherapies have also been introduced to further improve cure rates.

Multidisciplinary Approach

The unique multidisciplinary approach at Memorial Sloan-Kettering offers children and young adults with cancer the best opportunity for accurate diagnosis and the most effective treatment available, emphasizing treatments that target and cure cancer and return children to a normal life. The combined expertise and daily interaction among pediatric oncologists, surgeons, radiation oncologists, pathologists, and other subspecialists not only maximizes a child's chance of a cure, but also minimizes the potentially harmful effects of cancer -- and the treatments required to eradicate it -- on a child's growth and development. Each child at Memorial Sloan-Kettering is assigned to a team that consists of an attending physician, nurse practitioner, and social worker. The attending physician makes the diagnosis, suggests the treatment strategy, and supervises all aspects of care. This team coverage continues even after a child has completed treatment and is part of the Center's unique Long-Term Follow-Up and Adult Survivor programs, which are designed to meet the individualized health care needs of childhood cancer survivors and is available to children and young adults who have been off treatment for at least two years.

Support and Comfort

In 1969, Memorial Sloan-Kettering opened the world's first Pediatric Day Hospital to allow children to receive state-of-the-art cancer care on an outpatient basis. Today, approximately 90 percent of therapy here is delivered in ambulatory settings, and repeated hospitalizations for chemotherapy are avoided for the majority of children throughout their treatment. Many of these children would receive these treatments only as inpatients elsewhere. There are approximately 28,000 annual pediatric outpatient visits at Memorial Sloan-Kettering each year. For pediatric patients and their families who need a place to stay while a child receives treatment, the world's largest Ronald McDonald House is a few blocks away.