Reveals increased late mortality risks in childhood cancer survivors, suggesting improved prediction with symptom data.
10050 Background: Survivors of childhood cancer face a higher risk of late mortality than the general population. Yet no prior study has integrated patient-reported symptoms and social determinants of health with treatment exposures to predict late mortality risks. Methods: A total of 9,569 survivors from the CCSS cohort who completed two surveys (baseline [T1], follow-up [T2]) reported 37 symptoms spanning 10 domains (cardiac, pulmonary, sensory, musculoskeletal, nausea, pain, fatigue, memory, anxiety, depression) at T1 and T2. Additional predictors included sociodemographic and lifestyle factors, address-linked Area Deprivation Index, and treatment exposures. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) were calculated, stratified by individual symptoms and domains at T2 and T1-T2 change, to compare mortality rates between survivors and the general population five years after T2. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards models with LASSO regularization were used to predict 5-year health-related and cause-specific late mortality (cardiac, pulmonary, subsequent neoplasm) after T1 and T2. The dataset was randomly split into training and test datasets in a 7:3 ratio, and prediction performance was assessed using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). Results: Among 9,569 survivors (52.4% female), the median age at T1 and T2 was 27.1 and 36.9 years; median years from diagnosis to T1 and T2 were 16.6 and 26.3, respectively. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (31.3%) and Hodgkin lymphoma (15.3%) were the most frequently observed primary diagnoses. Compared with the sex/age/race/calendar year-matched general population, survivors had significantly higher health-related mortality 5 years after T2, with SMR of 4.21 (95%CI 3.76-4.70). Presence of cardiac and pulmonary symptom domains at T2, and their persistence and worsening from T1 to T2, were associated with >10-fold higher SMRs. Presence, persistence, and worsening of individual symptoms, including angina pectoris, chronic cough, and trouble breathing, were also associated with SMRs >10. For 5-year health-related mortality after T2, the symptom-based model yielded an AUC of 0.79 (95%CI 0.75-0.84), surpassing the symptom-agnostic model (AUC 0.76, 95%CI 0.71-0.81) and the T1 model (AUC 0.73, 95%CI 0.67-0.79). Cause-specific models also showed strong prediction performance, with symptom-based AUCs of 0.87 for cardiac, 0.89 for pulmonary, and 0.78 for subsequent neoplasms mortality. Conclusions: Adult survivors of childhood cancer experience elevated SMRs, with the greatest excess late mortality observed in those reporting cardiopulmonary symptoms. Longitudinal symptom-based models yielded the highest predictive performance, outperforming single-time-point and symptom-agnostic models. Incorporating symptom data can strengthen mortality prediction and inform targeted survivorship care.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Zhang et al. (2026) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: