There is a HUGE Unmet Need for Pediatric Proton Treatment

I was more than shocked to learn only 384 pediatric patients received proton treatment in 2009. WOW! Not a happy wow, but a sad wow. The number should be more like 3,000!!! Okay, Pediatric Proton Foundation you have your work cut out for you!

Consider the following comments from our board member Dr. Sameer Keole, Radiation Oncologist with ProCure's Oklahoma Proton Center.

"Our estimates are that ~3,000 children a year in the US would benefit from proton therapy. Best estimates are that, in 2009, 380 children received proton therapy in the United States. (Many of these patients are from abroad) With the addition of both our center and PENN now adding pediatric capacity, hopefully this number will climb to 500 in 2010. Still, more than 80% of children who would benefit from protons will not be able to receive this therapy."

There are many reasons that the number of pediatric patients numbers are limited. My main focus today is the number of centers. We need more. Each center has only so much capacity to treat children, and in previous blog I had estimated the number of kids treated based Boston's percentage of total pediatric patients treated at 1,000. I was wrong because I assumed everyone treated a similar percentage of peds. Boston actually treats the most percentage of peds and perhaps I should have used an average. Now I know the actual numbers by center, and some centers obviously have no focus on treating pediatrics. I know the kids don't turn the profit a prostate cancer patient does, but where is the morality of healthcare these days? Why aren't our children a priority for all centers? Why do all centers have a child squarely pictured on their brochures and their web if they have no focus on pediatrics? There is much to answer here for future blogs and I digress.

It was GREAT news then that plans for two new centers were announced over the past month. One in Knoxville, TN and the other in San Diego, CA.

1. A planned Knoxville cancer treatment center is set to become the first place in the state to offer proton therapy. The state's Health Services and Development Agency approved an application last week from Knoxville-based ProVision Trust to build a $118.8 million center and fill it with proton therapy cancer treatment equipment. ProVision has lined up support from the University of Tennessee Medical Center.

2. Scripps Health announced Tuesday that it will manage a $185 million proton center to be built in northern San Diego by Advanced Particle Therapy, a private health care company based in Minden, Nev. Construction is expected to start in July on a 7-acre site in San Diego's Carroll Canyon business district near Mira Mesa. The 102,000-square-foot facility is to include five treatment rooms, three with special gantries that allow a proton beam to be delivered to a patient at almost any angle. Officials said the project is expected to be finished in 2013.

My hope is that the new centers and the current centers will focus on the positive impact they can have on the pediatric cancer cases. We want all the centers to make it their priority to treat pediatrics, and report their numbers, not just show the kid's pictures on their web and brochures. Our kids our counting on us. Our kids need the voice of the Pediatric Proton Foundation to make their case to those that can change these statistics. Please visit and support us at http://www.pediatricprotonfoundation.org/.