(ARA) – When a child with cancer begins treatment, parents have the hope that their child will be cured and will live a long, healthy life. The significant advances being made in cancer treatment are allowing many children to survive well into adulthood, which is very good news.
At the same time, however, some life-saving treatments can result in short- and long-term side effects. Long-term childhood cancer survivors also can experience “late effects” – medical problems that surface many years later as a result of their treatments.
For 3-year-old Kaiden Brennfoerder of Plano, Texas, cancer struck without warning. His parents found him in the throes of a grand mal seizure on a Thursday morning and just four days later, doctors removed a golf-ball-sized cancerous tumor from his brain. His official diagnosis came a week after surgery. “His doctor didn’t want to do chemotherapy and radiation at the same time because he was so little,” says Amy, Kaiden’s mother. Kaiden had four months of chemotherapy before doctors were ready to begin radiation treatments.
However, that did not sit well with Kaiden’s parents, Brian and Amy. They “heard horror stories about the side effects of radiation therapy on children,” Amy recalls. When a friend in Oklahoma who works with children undergoing cancer treatment told Amy about proton therapy, the Brennfoerders began learning as much as they could about this alternative to radiation. Ultimately, with the support of their oncologist, the family decided on proton therapy for Kaiden.
“Our oncologist said it was just as effective as (traditional radiation), with the potential of having less severe side-effects later in his life,” Amy says.
For all its benefits, X-ray radiation therapy not only damages cancerous cells, it also can damage healthy tissue. Of particular concern is the damage to critical organs near the site of the tumor. X-ray radiation can be especially damaging to children and young bodies that are still growing. Depending on the site of the tumor and the pathway of the radiation, side effects for children can include loss of vision or hearing, a drop in IQ, memory problems, developmental delays, and even stunted growth. Late effects that might surface years later can include heart, lung, liver or kidney problems; bone thinning or a recurrence of the cancer or a secondary tumor.
Proton therapy is particularly appealing to parents who want to minimize the side effects of radiation therapy for their children. Like standard X-ray radiation therapy, proton therapy kills cancer cells by preventing them from dividing and growing. Unlike X-ray radiation, protons deposit most of their energy directly in the cancer tumor, meaning children can receive higher, more effective doses, with less damage to healthy tissues. Studies have shown proton therapy to be effective in treating a number of types of cancer in children and adults, including brain, head and neck, prostate, central nervous system and lung, as well as tumors at the base of the skull and along the spinal cord.
Although proton therapy has been successfully used to treat cancers for decades, many doctors remain unaware of it because only a handful of centers in the U.S. offer the therapy – nine in all, with a new ProCure center having just opened in suburban Chicago. It took a knowledgeable friend who happened to live near the ProCure Proton Therapy Center in Oklahoma City to bring the treatment to the attention of Kaiden’s parents.
Over six weeks, Kaiden received 30 proton therapy treatments at the Procure Proton Therapy Center in Oklahoma City. Though the family needed to temporarily relocate to receive the treatment, Amy says the trip was well worth it and Kaiden did extremely well.
“He did fantastic,” Amy says. “He kept his energy level. He was just a happy, normal little kid. He tolerated the treatment very well. It took him a week or so to warm up to it, but by the end he was saying ‘I’m ready to go to ProCure now’ when it was time for his treatment.”
A little more than six months to the day of his life-altering seizure, Kaiden completed his proton treatments without side effects except for a tiny triangle-shaped bald spot where the proton beam entered his head.
“I truly believe that within the next five years, proton therapy will be the mainstream treatment for cancer,” Amy says. “We would absolutely, 100 percent tell other parents to look into proton therapy for their children.
To learn more about the advantages of proton therapy, visit www.procure.com.
