Pediatr Blood Cancer 2011;56:1154

EDITORIALPediatric Psycho-Oncology Comes of Age: SIOP 2010

Andrea Farkas Patenaude, PhD,1* Martha Grootenhuis, PhD,2 and Robert Noll, PhD3

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).

Andrea Farkas Patenaude and Martha Grootenhuis

Organizers of the SIOP-PPO Boston meeting 2010

Robert Noll, Chair

Behavioral Sciences Committee

Children’s Oncology Group

1Department of Pediatric Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute,

Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston,

Massachusetts; 2Academic Medical Centre/Emma’s Children’s

Hospital, Pediatric Psychosocial Department, Amsterdam, Nether-

lands; 3Department of Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Psychology, Univer-

sity of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Conflict of interest: Nothing to report.

*Correspondence to: Andrea Farkas Patenaude, PhD, Dana-Farber

Cancer Institute, 450 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA 02215.

E-mail: andrea_patenaude@dfci.harvard.edu

Received 11 February 2011; Accepted 11 February 2011

� 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.DOI 10.1002/pbc.23118Published online in Wiley Online Library(wileyonlinelibrary.com).