About childhood cancer
Approximately 1700 children (15 & under) per year have a new diagnosis of cancer in the UK. This figure has changed very little from year to year, but in the 1960s less than 3 in 10 children survived. Today due to the investment by many charities like Candlelighters into research, more than 7 in 10 children are cured.
Other than accident, the many forms that cancer takes remain the biggest killer of children in the UK. Some cancers have a better outcome than others, often because there have been more patients to try treatments on, whereas some of the rarer cancers are harder to overcome.
Treatment of childhood cancer in the UK is at one of 21 specialist centres. Leeds is where Rocky was treated.
You can read more about childhood cancer at the CCLG website
Rocky Redman had a Stage IV Neuroblastoma.
An excellent background on childhood cancers can be read here
Most cancers have four stages:
- Stage I usually means a cancer is relatively small and contained within the organ it started in
- Stage II usually means that the tumour is larger and cancer cells may have spread to lymph nodes immediately surrounding the site of the disease. However the cancer has not started to spread into surrounding tissue.
- Stage III usually means the cancer is larger. It may have started to spread into surrounding tissues and there are cancer cells in the lymph nodes in the area
- Stage IV means the cancer has spread from where it started to another body organ – this is also called secondary or metastatic cancer.
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