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Pediatric psycho‐oncology comes of age: SIOP 2010

Pediatric psycho-oncology, like its related discipline, pediatric oncology, is a relatively recent phenomenon. The last 30 years encompass almost all of its history and it is only within the last 15–20 years that there has even been a critical mass of psycho-oncologists to merit occasional, independent professional meetings, usually quite small in number. Adult psycho-oncology meetings still have few pediatric sessions, but participation rates are meager. It has been difficult for the small but growing number of pediatric psycho-oncologists to find a place to share with similarly focused colleagues the exciting new areas of research which are developing and the results of the last decades of work on neuropsychological functioning, on quality of life, palliative care, and on family impact. The 1-day SIOP Psycho-Oncology (SIOP-PPO) Pre-Meeting in Boston on October 21, 2010 was a meeting in marked contrast. While it was only the second meeting organized by the founding committee SIOP-PPO (Martha Grootenhuis, Chair), it was attended by more than 200 professionals. Sessions were given by numerous international experts in the field and were well received by packed audiences. The scope of the sessions was broad, ranging from screening assessments for treatment-related distress to quality of life interventions, including creative exercise programs, interventions for and assessment of distress in children undergoing stem cell transplantation and their family members, genetic and imaging correlates of neurocognitive late effects, the pros and cons of using post-traumatic stress as a model for the burdens of childhood cancer on patients and parents, and recent emerging group-wide psychosocial research within the Children’s Oncology Group to obtain psychometrically sound measures to carefully monitor late effects. It also included brief presentations by new investigators offering preliminary results of on-going research. The keynote lecture was given by Dr. Jimmie Holland of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the founder of the field of Psycho-Oncology. The abstracts of the sessions at this meeting are included in this issue. Pediatric oncologists attended this meeting along with psycho-oncology professionals, an important marker of the mutual interests which are served by psycho-oncology research. We are all interested in how treatments and professional interactions determine long-term quality of life for children with cancer and their families and we are optimistic that psycho-oncology outcome data can inform future clinical trials. SIOP is to be congratulated on supporting this important interchange, a commitment reflected in their planning of a similar meeting at SIOP 2012 in London (for information on London SIOP-PPO meeting email siopppo@amc.nl).