Today there are only two major groups dealing with nephroblastoma worldwide.
1.The COG (Childrens Oncolgy Group) nephroblastoma group in Northern America and
2.The SIOP (International Society of Pediatric Oncology) nephroblastoma group in Europe and other countries outside Europe, like Brazil.
If your child is being diagnosed having a kidney tumour, you can contact the Pediatric Oncology Society of your country from the links provided at this site:
These societies can help you to find a Pediatric Oncologist in your area, who will treat patients with nephroblastoma within these clinical trials.
The main objectives of these trials and studies are:
1.to treat patients according to well-defined risk groups in order to achieve highest cure rates,
2.to decrease the frequency and intensity of acute and late toxicity and
3.to minimize the cost of therapy.
In that way the SIOP trials and studies largely focus on the issue of preoperative therapy. The complete surgical removal of a shrunken tumour is facilitated, mutilation caused by surgical procedures is minimized or avoided and micrometastases, not visible at diagnosis, are treated as early as possible. Besides that, response to treatment can be measured inidividually by tumour volume reduction and/or percentage of therapy induced necrosis in the histological specimen. This might give an early individual prognostic parameter and can be used for further stratifying and individualizing post-operative treatment.
