Cancer Health Center

Cancer treatments to the central nervous system (CNS) may affect the child's brain.

Childhood cancer survivors who received radiation therapy to the head, brain surgery, or intrathecal chemotherapy are at risk of having problems in the following areas:

• Thinking.
• Learning.
• Problem solving.
• Speech.
• Reading.
• Writing.
• Memory.
• Coordinating movement between the eyes, hands, and other muscles.

Survivors may have learning disabilities or a lower IQ.

Certain factors increase the risk that CNS late effects will occur.

The following factors may increase the risk of CNSlate effects:

• Being young at the time of treatment (the younger the child, the greater the risk).
• Having a tumor in the CNS.
• Receiving certain combinations of treatment, such as high-dose chemotherapy and radiation therapy to the brain.

CNS late effects may be caused by treatment for certain childhood cancers.

Treatment for these and other childhood cancers may cause CNS late effects:

• Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
• Central nervous system (CNS) tumors.
• Head and neck cancers.

Survivors of childhood cancer may have anxiety and depression related to their cancer.

Survivors of childhood cancer may have anxiety and depression related to physical changes, appearance, or the fear of cancer coming back. These problems may prevent survivors from returning to their normal routines and activities. They may also cause problems with personal relationships, education, employment, and health.

Some cancer survivors have post-traumatic stress disorder.

Being diagnosed with a life-threatening disease and receiving treatment for it is often traumatic. This trauma may cause a group of symptoms called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is defined as having certain symptoms following a stressful event that involved death or the threat of death, serious injury, or a threat to oneself or others. People who have survived very stressful situations, such as military combat or natural disasters, may also have PTSD.

PTSD can affect cancer survivors in the following ways:

• Reliving the time they were diagnosed and treated for cancer, in nightmares or flashbacks, and thinking about it all the time.
• Avoiding places, events, and people that remind them of the cancer experience.
• Being constantly overexcited, fearful, irritable, or unable to sleep, or having trouble concentrating.

Family problems, little or no social support from family or friends, and stress not related to the cancer may increase the chances of having PTSD. Because avoiding places and persons connected to the cancer is part of PTSD, survivors with PTSD may not try to get the medical treatment they need.