Tricia King still remembers the clinical case that informed her career. She was in graduate school, testing the cognitive abilities of a pediatric brain cancer survivor. She was startled to discover the patient’s IQ score had plummeted 30 points since the last time he had been tested.
“His raw score abilities had not changed,” says King, who is a developmental clinical neuropsychologist and professor of psychology at Georgia State. “The questions he previously answered correctly, he was still answering correctly. He just wasn’t gaining the knowledge and skills on the other items as fast as his peers.”
It was an eye-opening moment.
“For a long time, cancer research was really focused only on survival rates and not on complications that can occur from lifesaving treatments,” she says. “Now it’s about balancing survival with what can we do to help survivors thrive.”
King studies long-term survivors of neurodevelopmental issues that occur in childhood, including congenital heart disease, traumatic brain injury and pediatric brain tumors. Her research is focused on the factors that contribute to optimal — or less than optimal — outcomes after a developmental disruption like cancer.
In Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, we spoke with King about some of the ways that cancer and cancer treatment can affect kids across their lifespan.
Source: Charting a New Course for Childhood Cancer Survivors