Letter to the editor: Care of terminally ill children with cancer

✍ Scribed by Masera, Giuseppe; Jankovic, Momcilo

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 17 KB
• Volume: 34
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0098-1532
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1096-911x(200004)34:4<273::aid-mpo11>3.0.co;2-w

✦ Synopsis

We appreciate very much the letter of Dr. Ruprecht Nitschke as a comment on our guidelines for terminally ill children. The author reports the very long experience, since 1974, of the Hematology/ Oncology Section of the Children's Hospital of Oklahoma in caring for the terminally ill children, underscoring the importance of the so-called final stage conference (FSC). It is a very interesting and worthwhile experience.

However, this modality as well as the accuracy in analyzing some points of our document do not contradict the "guidelines." We consider that the aim of our guidelines is to collect and gather the experiences of so-called experts in different countries (certainly considering eth-nic, cultural, and linguistic differences) and to translate them into general suggestions. The guidelines express different realities. We hope that others can present their experience, similar to or different from ours, for promoting a valuable debate on one of the most difficult areas (death and dying) is pediatric oncology.