M.K. Neidhardt – författare

Cancer in Children is the first volume in this new series, sponsored by the DICC, on the treatment of cancer. The editors and authors feel strongly that more standardization is needed on a worldwide basis in cancer therapy. This, of course, is only possible if experts from all countries subscribe to a joint policy of making their treatment designs available to practising oncologists all over the world. Current Treatment of Cancer will discuss all the equipment and methods now in use in cancer therapy. It will cover all types of cancer, thus providing the reader with comprehensive information on cancer manage­ ment. The appearance of a book on paediatric oncology as the first in the series is intentional: in recent decades there has been a tremendous improvement in the treatment of cancer in children, and there is hope for even further success in this fight. We are convinced that this book and the series it is introducing will help us to make a concerted response to the challenge of cancer.

With the fall in mortality from infectious diseases, the impact of childhood cancer in the Western World has increased to become the second commonest cause of death in the age group 1-14 years, being surpassed only by accidents. However, even in those countries in which paediatric cancer is attracting increasing interest, the disease is relatively uncommon, and the number of cases seen by anyone physician, even in a large general hospital, is often limited to one or two a year. The widely held view by parents and even by many doctors that cancer in childhood is usually untreatable and inevitably fatal is no longer tenable. With improvement in the therapeutic response or in the actual survival rates of children with such lesions as Wilms'' tumour, brain tumours, rhabdomyosarcomas, Ewing''s sarcoma, retinoblastoma, lym­ phoma and even leukaemia, there is a real hope of achieving a substantial reduction in the mortality of childhood cancer. Paediatric oncology is, in fact, providing a vigorous stimulus to the much wider field of cancer treatment and research, and is demonstrating the advantages of a multi-disciplinary cooperation in the management of this disease.