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Parental Separation and Pediatric Cancer
Pediatrics, 05/10/2012
Grant S et al. – Experiencing cancer in a child does not seem to be a risk factor for separation. The authors study will allow clinicians to reassure parents and to support them in facing the trauma of cancer in their child.
Methods- In a nationwide cohort, they compared the risk for ending cohabitation of the parents of 2450 children (aged 0–20 years) given a diagnosis of cancer with the risk of parents of 44853 randomly selected, gender- and age-matched cancer-free children.
- Rate ratios and 95% confidence intervals for separation were estimated in a Cox proportional hazards model.
- The parents of children with cancer did not have a higher risk for separation than the general population (rate ratio: 1.00 [95% confidence interval: 0.91–1.10]).
- Separate analyses according to type of cancer and survival of the child similarly yielded null results.
