Ass Prof. Anders Kreuger
University Children´s Hospital, S-751 85 Uppsala, Sweden.
 

Pediatric oncology is a comparatively young medical specialty with great changes in diagnosis and treatment of childhood cancer in recent years. Previously, childhood cancer was almost alwys regarded as incurable diseases, but today we know that 2 of 3 children with cancer can be cured and that all children with cancer should be optimally treated according to actual protocols.
 
When there is a suspicion of a malignant disease in a child in Sweden there should be an immediate admittance to one of the 44 pediatric clinics. If the suspicion is  strong or confirmed at the pediatric unit, the child will be immediately sent to one of the child cancer centres. There are 4 complete child cancer centres in Sweden, i.e. there are also departments of pediatric surgery at these centres.

Investigations, diagnosis and institution of treatment will be performed according to protocols worked out by the Swedish Child Leukemia Group (founded in 1967), The Working Group for Children with Solid Tumours (founded in 1974) or the Working Group for Children with CNS-tumours (founded in 1993).
 
The basic principle for pediatric oncology in Sweden is thus cooperation. This means cooperation between patients, their families and the hospital, cooperation between many kinds of medical disciplines, cooperation between hospitals and in Scandinavia also between the five Nordic countries. The Nordic Society of Pediatric Haematology and Oncology (NOPHO) was thus founded in 1982 and today there are common diagnostic and therapy protocols in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden for many pediatric malignancies, i.e. Acute Lymphoblastic and Non-Lymphoblastic Leukemias and Lymphomas. These therapeutic programs in NOPHO are all more or less associated with research work aiming at improvements of diagnosis and treatment for children with cancer.
 
The parents´organisations and the Child Cancer Foundation in Sweden have for many  years been important in assisting the families with children with cancer in many ways but also by supporting the scientific research work in medical fields associated with the development of pediatric oncology.