By Karen Albritton, MD (Planet Cancer Medical Advisor)
Chief, Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology Program
Assistant Professor, Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical SchoolNearly 90% of the patients seen at pediatric centers or by pediatric oncologists are less than 15 years old; likewise more than 90% of all patients seen by medical oncologists or at adult hospitals are greater than 40 years of age. Yet each year in the United States, 70,000 individuals between the ages of 15 and 40 are diagnosed with cancer. This means that adolescents and young adults (AYA) are not the focus of care given by, or research done by, either system. The current binary system of medicine, divided arbitrarily and not biologically (and not even reproducibly between centers) between age 16 and 21 does a disservice to those patients at the overlap. This is evidenced by the lack of progress in survival statistics for this population; although younger children and older adults with cancer have benefited from a steady improvement in 5-year survival of over 1.5% per year, AYA patients have had no change in survival rates in 20 years. [more ]