Capturing the young child's reports of cancer treatment tolerability: Does our practice reflect an assumption that they cannot report?

Assessing symptom adverse events (AEs) related to cancer treatment is critical for both pediatric oncology care and clinical trials. Identifying symptom AEs aids patients, caregivers, and clinicians in managing distressing symptoms through physical, psychological, and pharmacological interventions. Mitigating symptom AEs may enable the child to remain on cancer therapy longer and hopefully receive maximum benefit from treatment. In clinical trial settings, accurate symptom AE measurements are essential to assess drug tolerability, evaluate safety, identify post-market adverse events, and therefore, inform treatment decision-making. Whenever children can self-report, data on symptom AEs should come directly from the child in the form of a patient-reported outcome (PRO) measure.