Meningiomas occurring during long-term survival after treatment for childhood cancer

Abstract

Childhood cancer is rare but improvements in treatment over the past five decades have resulted in a cohort of more than 30,000 long-term survivors of childhood cancer in the UK with more added annually. These long-term survivors are at risk of late effects of cancer treatment which replace original tumour recurrence as the leading cause of premature death. Second neoplasms are a particular risk and in the central nervous system meningiomas occur increasingly with increased radiation dose to central nervous system tissue and length of time after exposure, resulting in a 500-fold increase above that expected in the normal population by 40 years of follow up. This multidisciplinary author group and others met to discuss the issue. Our pooled information, and consensus that screening should only follow symptoms, was published online by the Royal College of Radiologists in 2013. We outline here the current knowledge and management of these neoplasms secondary to childhood cancer treatment.

Keywords: childhood cancer treatment; late effects; radiation-induced secondary neoplasms; secondary meningiomas.