Preface

The healing process in children and adolescents with oncological diseases depends greatly on the knowledge and experience of all those involved in the patients’ care: physicians, specialist nurses, psychooncologists and others. This last group embraces parents, siblings and teachers as well as laboratory staff, physiotherapists, chaplains, social workers and other hospital personnel. Increasingly, the patients’ general practitioners and pediatricians and external nurses are also becoming involved. Knowledge and experience on the part of the carers are necessary for full information of the patient, who is thus enabled to play a full part in his or her own healthcare: the power of the informed patient. Whether a young patient is waiting for the diagnosis, undergoing intensive therapy, or suffering a complication or setback, whether he/she knows that the disease has almost certainly been healed or that it is progressing with early death as the probable consequence – in every situation, full information is the basis of optimal care.

This book was written to improve the fundamental dissemination of knowledge. It has no pretensions to replace the standard textbooks and the journals regarding pediatric oncology.

In this second edition the chapters systematically describe the various disease groups. The content is adapted by new findings within the last 5 years. Some of these chapters were written by Thomas Kühne, for many years my trusted colleague. Robert Arceci of Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, editor-in-chief of “Pediatric Blood and Cancer,” brought his vast experience to bear on the English translation.

My heartfelt thanks go to all of the contributing authors and to the responsible staff at Springer Heidelberg for their commitment to this project.

May this book help to create an atmosphere of trust, hope and joy in the face of potentially life-threatening disease.

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Contents

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