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Presentation Description:
Overall survival rates for childhood cancer survivors exceed 80%, thanks to new therapies and the evolution of pediatric cancer clinical trials. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy, in general, have the potential to cause late effects in childhood cancer survivors. The latest data show that 95% of survivors will have a late effect related to their cancer treatment by age 45 and of those, 80% will have a serious/disabling or life threatening condition. Screening for late effects in survivors is generally guided by the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) long term follow up guidelines. These guidelines provide evidenced based rationale for screening. The 5th version of these guidelines will be released in October 2018. Each guideline has been reviewed by a panel of experts to ensure the recommendations are in keeping with current evidence. Modern therapies such as monoclonal antibodies and tyrosine kinase inhibitors are increasingly being used in up front treatments, but the long term side effects of these agents at this time remain unknown. This presentation provides an overview of the major changes to the existing COG Long term follow up guidelines and highlights several new “late effect’” studies open in the COG. There will be a focus on the Late Effects after High Risk Neuroblastoma (LEARHN) study. This is one of the first protocols to prospectively study the late effects of modern neuroblastoma treatment which incorporates immunotherapy.

Speaker:
Eleanor Hendershot, RN(EC), MN, BScN, NP-Ped
Nurse Practitioner, Pediatric AfterCare Program
McMaster Children’s Hospital, Hamilton Health Science

Eleanor Hendershot completed her Master of Nursing in the Pediatric Acute Care Nurse Practitioner program at the University of Toronto in 2003. She received her BSCN from the University of Ottawa in 1994.

Eleanor has worked in pediatric oncology for the last 24 years starting at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, then moving to The Hospital for Sick Children and currently works at McMaster Children’s Hospital. She is also cross appointed as adjunct lecturer in the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto. For the last 5 years, Eleanor has been working as a Nurse Practitioner in Aftercare initially at SickKids and Princess Margaret Hospital and now at McMaster.

Eleanor is a member of Outcomes and Survivorship steering committee in the Children’s Oncology Group. She has published multiple articles and book chapters on a variety of topics pertaining to pediatric oncology and pediatric oncology survivorship.