Childhood cancer affects 400,000 children globally each year. Prompt diagnosis of childhood cancer is crucial for optimising survival and outcomes. Current diagnosis relies upon public and professional symptom recognition, accessibility to healthcare, and diagnostics, all of which can be timely but unreliable. The 2018 Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer (GICC), launched by the World Health Organization (WHO), prioritises early cancer diagnosis with the aim of achieving a two-thirds remission rate by 2030, saving the lives of approximately one million children.
However, at present there is a significant lack of paediatric-focused national cancer control plans across Europe. In the UK, the HeadSmart campaign, which focused on symptom awareness, has halved the time to diagnosis for children with brain tumours. GlobalData epidemiologists expect that implementing similar public and professional symptom awareness campaigns for all types of childhood cancers could significantly improve patient outcomes.
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A population-based observational study published in The Lancet by Dhurgshaarna Shanmugavadivel and colleagues on 27 May 2025 aimed to quantify diagnostic intervals and routes to diagnose childhood cancer in the UK. Patient interval, diagnostic interval and total diagnostic interval (TDI) were calculated from data obtained by the principal treatment centres in which childhood cancer care in the UK is centralised. Of the 1,957 participants aged under 18 years, 74% had between one and three appointments with healthcare professionals before diagnosis, 67% were diagnosed via emergency presentation, and only 2% were diagnosed due to incidental finding.
The longest median TDI was observed in bone tumours (12.6 weeks; interquartile range [IQR] 6.6–23.4), followed by carcinoma/melanomas (9.6 weeks; IQR 4.9–25.6) and Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) (8.8 weeks, IQR 5.1–27.6). There were no major differences across ethnicity or sex when assessing lengthier diagnostic intervals. However, as age increased, all intervals increased and the gap between mean and median increased, indicating a skewed distribution. This is comparable to the BRIGHTLIGHT data, which reported a median TDI of 8.9 weeks in 12–24-year-olds. However, nearly a decade on, there has been little improvement in intervals, with a median TDI of 8.7 weeks for adolescents aged over 15 in this recent study by Shanmugavadivel and colleagues.
There is an urgent need to focus on and re-evaluate strategies that will accelerate childhood cancer diagnosis in line with the WHO goals, given that the risk of long-term depression is doubled in patients with a TDI over two months.
Stratifying symptomatology by diagnosis has already proven successful in accelerating diagnosis for childhood brain tumours. According to GlobalData epidemiologists, there will be 193 diagnosed incident cases of Hodgkin lymphoma in children and adolescents (aged under 19 years) in 2025. If policies resembling HeadSmart can be replicated for other childhood cancer types, such as Hodgkin’s lymphoma, GlobalData epidemiologists anticipate that the TDI and patient outcomes associated with childhood cancer diagnoses will be vastly improved.
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