New thesis on the childhood malignancy Ewing sarcoma
Asle Hesla from the group Orthopaedics will defend his thesis "Ewing Sarcoma—treatment, prognosis and late effects" on May 8th, 2020. Main Supervisor is Henrik Bauer.
What's the main focus of your thesis?
Local treatment for the childhood malignancy Ewing sarcoma, and the long-term risks for secondary cancer after treatment.
Which are the most important results?
- Radiotherapy alone gives good local control for Ewing sarcoma when the tumor is located in the sacrum.
- For tumors located elsewhere, surgery gives superior local control compared with radiotherapy alone.
- Adjuvant radiotherapy should be administered if only a marginal surgical margin can be obtained.
- The risk for secondary cancer is ~9% after 30 years of follow up.
- The risk remains increased compared with the general population past 30 years of follow up.
- The main driver of the excess cancer risk is breast cancer.
How can this new knowledge contribute to the improvement of people's health?
The results increase current knowledge of which Ewing sarcoma patients should undergo surgical treatment, respective should be treated with radiotherapy.
The study also delineates the risk for secondary cancer. By doing so, we now know more about how to reduce this risk, and how to monitor this patient group after they have survived their primary Ewing sarcoma.
What are your future ambitions?
In the nearest future, my aim is to collaborate with a group studying late-effects after treatment for childhood malignancies. I would like to do a case-control study on late effects, not only restricted to secondary cancer, among Ewing- and osteosarcoma survivors.
I would also like to retrieve new data from the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen), and other registries, to investigate a broad range of treatment related complications.
Lastly, I would like to establish my own research group, and ultimately to conduct a prospective collaborative Scandinavian randomized trial on sarcoma.
