In Uncategorized

Little brainstrust is delighted to add an extra tool to the ‘little brain box’ thanks to IPEM. The Little Linacs are designed to alleviate anxiety in children with a brain tumour regarding their treatment.

Going through brain tumour treatment can be incredibly daunting and overwhelming for anyone. For children with a brain tumour, who understand less about the procedures and machines often used in treatment, this can be even more apparent.

Importance of play therapy in childhood brain tumour treatments

Play therapy has a hugely important role when it comes to preparing children for their radiotherapy treatment. It develops an environment for children to feel relaxed and talk freely about their treatment. Play therapy is a form of counselling for children to express their feelings through toys and books.

Catherine Gibney, a Paediatric Oncology Play Therapist, explains more: “As a Hospital Play Specialist it is our goal to be able to prepare our children and young people for all procedures they are undertaking.  It is essential to be truthful whilst building relationships, and to deliver preparation in an age appropriate fashion. The main aim for preparation is to reduce any potential trauma and misconceptions by empowering the child/young person in order for the procedure to be carried out in a calm and controlled manner”

Many childhood brain tumour patients will have radiotherapy as a treatment option. Radiotherapy preparation for children includes a variety of play therapy and activities designed to allow patients and families to familiarise with a new environment in a relaxed stress-free manner. This includes custom sticker charts and personalised photograph books to help children understand their treatment.

Little Linacs 

The Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM) launched the Little Linac campaign to build toy models of linear accelerators for children undergoing radiotherapy for cancer treatment in the UK.

Khadijha, our Support Specialist for Children and Families, saw the incredible value of these models for the families that she supports: “I knew the toy that can be modelled to become a linear accelerator (radiotherapy machine), a CT and a MRI scanner would be an excellent tool for children to use to increase their understanding of medical machines they may encounter”.

Play therapy is valued highly by parents too, including one mother of a 5 year old boy currently receiving radiotherapy:

 “My son would not have gone through his radiotherapy sessions as easily as he did, if at all, without play preparation.  It took away all the unknown fears and strangeness’s from the experience.  It made it possible for him to receive his treatment without anaesthetic, which is a massive positive”.

 

Professor Mark Tooley, IPEM’s President, said: “We are delighted to be able to support brainstrust by making a donation of Little Linac kits for them to include in their little brain boxes for children”.

We know at brainstrust scanxiety is real and the fear of machines can occur. We are so grateful for the donation of 60 Little Linacs from IPEM. These will be a valuable addition to our already powerful information toolkit, the little brain box. The Little Linac is a perfect example of how play therapy can support children and reduce their anxiety when undergoing radiotherapy treatment.

fatigue final
Managing fatigue: a workshop in GlasgowPatient & Carer Events, Uncategorized
52914061 10156926625093516 7287664614811107328 n
TEAFEST and G&T Fest eventsFundraising, Fundraising News

Introduction

The Brain Tumour Data Dashboard lets you explore up -to-date, population level data about the brain tumours diagnosed in England between 2013 and 2015. Using the drop down menus on the left you can select different groups of patients to view in the charts below. In these charts the number of patients for every 100 diagnoses is displayed as images of people. Patients have been grouped by date of diagnosis, type of tumour, age, gender, and region in England.

For each group of patients you can explore the different routes to diagnosis, the proportion of those who received chemotherapy or radiotherapy, as well as the survival of the patients within each group. For more information about what these metrics mean please see the glossary.

How to use

  1. Select the year of diagnosis using the drop down menu.
  2. Select your patient group of interest from the four drop down menus in the following order:
    1. Tumour group
    2. Age at diagnosis
    3. Region of England
    4. Gender of patient
  3. To view a second chart to compare different groups of patients, click the ‘compare’ button.The second chart will appear below the first chart.

*Note that the tool is best used on a laptop or tablet rather than a mobile phone*

Unavailable data

Some of the data in these charts is not available.There are two main reasons for this:

  1. How the data has been grouped

If you cannot select a patient group from the drop down menus, the data is unavailable because of how the data has been organised.

Public Health England has grouped the data like a branching tree. The bottom of the tree contains all the patients with brain tumours, and then each branch divides the data by a certain characteristics, like age, or location of tumour. But the data is divided in an order, starting with location of the tumour (endocrine or brain), then by age, region, and gender. Age is at the start because it makes a bigger difference to survival rates and treatment rates than gender or region. Sometimes, after the data has been split by type of tumour and age, there is not enough data to be split again. This is because to protect patient confidentiality groups cannot contain less than 100 patients. Because some groups cannot be split further, you cannot create ‘totals’ for everyone by region or gender. For example, you cannot see results for all ages by region, or all brain tumours by gender. If these totals were calculated and released, it might be possible to identify patients, which is why Public Health England cannot release this data.

  1. Statistical reasons and data availability

If you can select a patient group from the chart menus, but the chart does not display, the data is unavailable for one of several reasons:

  1. Data is not yet available for the selected year from Public Health England.
  2. Data is not available because the data quality is too poor to release this statistic.
  3. Data is not available as the statistic is not appropriate for this group.
  4. Data is not available because the standard error of the estimate was greater than 20% and so the estimate has been supressed.

Up to date brain tumour data

Brain tumour data may influence the decisions you make about your care. Data also helps you understand the bigger picture, or landscape, in which you find yourself.

Brain tumour data and statistics influence the focus, and work of organisations like brainstrust. The information helps us to understand the scale and impact of the problems we are setting out to solve.

This tool helps you understand the landscape in which you find yourself having been diagnosed with a brain tumour. This landscape can be particularly tricky to navigate as there are many different types of brain tumour, all of which have a different impact.

The information you see represents the most up-to-date, official, population level brain tumour data available for England. Over time we will be adding to the brain tumour data available and publishing reports, with recommendations, as a result of what we learn from this data.

The data behind this content has come from Public Health England’s National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS) and is a direct result of the ‘Get Data Out’ project.

This project provides anonymised population level brain tumour data for public use in the form of standard output tables, accessible here: http://cancerdata.nhs.uk/standardoutput

Incidence

The number or rate (per head of population) of new cases of a disease diagnosed in a given population during a specified time period (usually a calendar year). The crude rate is the total number of cases divided by the mid-year population, usually expressed per 100,000 population.

Malignant

Malignant tumours which grow by invasion into surrounding tissues and have the ability to metastasise to distant sites

Mortality

The number or rate (per head of population) of deaths in a given population during a specified time period (usually a calendar year). The crude rate is the total number of deaths divided by the mid-year population, usually expressed per 100,000 population.

Non-malignant

Not cancerous. Non-malignant tumours may grow larger but do not spread to other parts of the body.

Survival

The length of time from the date of diagnosis for a disease, such as cancer, that patients diagnosed with the disease are still alive. In a clinical trial, measuring the survival is one way to see how well a new treatment works. Also called ‘overall survival’ or ‘OS’.

Routes to Diagnosis

Under the ‘Routes to Diagnosis’ tab in the Brain Tumour Data Dashboard, you can explore the ways patients have been diagnosed with brain tumours. There are many ways, or routes, for cancers to be diagnosed in the NHS. A ‘route to diagnosis’ is the series of events between a patient and the healthcare system that leads to a diagnosis of cancer. The routes include:

  1. Two Week Wait

Patients are urgently referred by their GP for suspected cancer via the Two Week Wait system and are seen by a specialist within 2 weeks where they are diagnosed.

  1. GP referral

Diagnosis via a GP referral includes routine and urgent referrals where the patient was not referred under the Two Week Wait system.

  1. Emergency Presentation

Cancers can be diagnosed via emergency situations such as via A&E, emergency GP referral, emergency transfer or emergency admission.

  1. Outpatient

Outpatient cancer diagnoses include diagnoses via an elective route which started with an outpatient appointment that is either a self-referral or consultant to consultant referral. (It does not include those under the Two Week Wait referral system).

  1. Inpatient elective

Diagnosis via an inpatient elective route is where diagnosis occurs after the patient has been admitted into secondary care from a waiting list, or where the admission is booked or planned.

  1. Death Certificate Only

Diagnoses made by Death Certificate Only are made where there is no more information about the cancer diagnosis other than the cancer related death notifications. The date of diagnosis is the same as that of the date of death.

  1. Unknown

For some patients with a cancer diagnosis, there is no relevant data available to understand the route to diagnosis.

 

More information

If any of the statistical terms in this section of the brainstrust website are hard to understand, we recommend looking them up here:

Cancer Research UK’s Cancer Statistics Explained

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/cancer-stats-explained/statistics-terminology-explained#heading-Seven

If you are looking for help understanding terms relating specifically to brain tumours, and treatment, then the brainstrust glossary is available here:

https://www.brainstrust.org.uk/advice-glossary.php