The management of adolescents and young adults with cancer

Adolescents and Young Adults (AYA) with cancer are young people developing serious illness when at the interface between the responsibilities of paediatric and adult cancer services. Personally, they are in a period of transition both biologically and in major social roles (Sawyer et al., 2018) [1]. For these and other reasons they present a unique set of clinical challenges in their management. Over the last 20 years the requirement for specific services to address their needs has been identified and this has become a growing field of research. Despite this survival rates still lag behind those of children and older adults with cancer (Gatta et al., 2009) [2].

Why do AYA patients have worse outcomes? The observation is that the reason is multifactorial with path to diagnosis, unique cancer biology, uncertainty of treatment protocol, compliance issues and poor recruitment to clinical trials all playing a part. In this review we will discuss the unique challenges faced by healthcare professionals when managing AYA patients who are commonly and accurately described as being in an ‘interface’ position.