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Pediatric patients are surviving their cancer and growing into adults. However, doctors are becoming increasingly concerned about the long-term health effects of the treatments that saved their patient's life. Many serious health conditions go undiagnosed because Doctors do not always think about the conditions that may effects pediatric cancer survivors. There was a study conducted with 1700 participants by St. Jude's Hospital. The participants were 10 years past their diagnosis and underwent lots of tests to determine any long-term conditions they might have. The average age of the study was 33. There are almost 400,000 pediatric cancer survivors and that number will grow. It is imperative to ensure follow up programs are in place and that doctors use minimal radiation.

The cause of most cases of pediatric leukemia is not known, as most sufferers do not display any risk factors for the disease. However scientists have begun to understand how certain changes in DNA can cause leukemia. Cancer can be caused by mutation oncogenes, the genes that control when cells divide. A translocation between chromosomes 2 and 22 causes almost all cases of childhood chronic myeloid leukemia and childhood acute lymphocytic leukemia. Other genetic mutations can be inherited, however most of the mutations that cause leukemia develop after birth. Environmental factors, when combined with a genetic predisposition for leukemia, may trigger the disease. However the cause of most pediatric leukemia remains unknown.

Being the leader of the research team at the University of Alberta, Lisa Hartling experiments with how music affects levels of pain. The team conducted with 42 children in the pediatric ER: half given music to listen to while getting an IV, the rest given no music. Hartling reports that there were less pain after the procedure for the kids that had listened to music than the kids that had not. She hopes to continue this research, testing with different types of music or other distractions to help lower pain during medical procedures.

Washington University School of Medicine and St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital have teamed up to identify genetic mutations that cause pediatric cancer. There are over 600 patient's genes being analyzed. The tumor cells are compared to the patients healthy cells and the differences are recorded. The program is trying to identify a mutation that causes a healthy cell to turn into a cancerous one. This in turn can help scientists develop new treatments to help young cancer patients.