By: Leah Bressler -
Dr. Sklar, Pediatric Endocrinologist, Survivorship expert and Director of the Long-term Follow-up program at Memorial Sloan Kettering, provided the morning keynote address and the first clinical lecture of the Consortium. He reviewed how long-term outcomes are highly dependent on both treatment (e.g. radiation vs. chemotherapy) and demographic characteristics like age and biological sex. Attendees learned that endocrine complications are most common in survivors treated with high-dose alkylating agents, such as that used in patients undergoing auto- and allo-stem cell-transplants with chemotherapy-alone protocols, and in survivors treated with radiation to the head, neck or pelvis. The impact of radiation is both dose and time-dependent and relatively low doses of radiation, 18 Gy, have been associated with precocious puberty and growth hormone deficiency.