RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SURVIVORSHIP CARE

Recommendations for surveillance of late effects

The Survivorship Passport provides healthcare professionals with a comprehensive Treatment Summary, as well as a personalised Survivorship Care Plan (SCP) with recommendations for Survivorship Care according to international guidelines. These international guidelines for Survivorship Care are for survivors who are >5 years post-diagnosis.

Several evidence-based guidelines with surveillance recommendations for late effects have been developed by the International Guideline Harmonization Group (IGHG) and the PanCare Network, involving HCPs, researchers and survivors. In the PanCareFollowUp project, additional recommendations were developed for topics where no evidence-based IGHG recommendations yet exist.1

Within the PanCareFollowUp Care intervention, a consensus decision was taken to adopt the strong (green) and moderate (yellow) recommendations ‘to do’ surveillance investigations, as well as the strong recommendations ‘not to do’ (red); the (orange) ‘to do’ recommendations from the IGHG guidelines were not included as they are being phased by the IGHG. As the PanCareFollowUp project included use of the SurPass (v1.2) in Italy, this same approach was adopted in v1.2 and also in v2.0 in the PanCareSurPass project.

After the end of the PanCareFollowUp project, the recommendations for long-term Survivorship Care were updated in 2024 and are maintained by the PanCare Guidelines Group according to new/updated IGHG guidelines, latest research or recently identified best practices. Updates to the SurPass to reflect these guideline updates will be required and this is planned via yearly review in collaboration with the yearly updates by the PanCare Guidelines Group, and will be reflected in future versions of SurPass.

Recommendations for short-term surveillance of late effects

PanCareSurPass also developed guidelines for Survivorship Care for survivors within the timeframe of end of treatment to 5 years post-diagnosis.2 Future updates to the SurPass may include this patient population also.

Disclaimer

PanCare strives to provide accurate and complete information that is up-to-date as of the date of publication.

No warranty or representation, expressed or implied, is made concerning the accuracy, reliability, completeness, relevance, or timeliness of this information.

The PanCare materials are free to use for anyone aiming to inform about late effects and long-term survivorship care. However, no financial advantage may be achieved. All communication should reference PanCare and link to the PanCare website.

PanCareSurPass has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 899999. The material presented and views expressed here are the responsibilities of the author(s) only. The EU Commission takes no responsibility for any use made of the information set out.

1 van Kalsbeek, R.J. et al. European PanCareFollowUp Recommendations for surveillance of late effects of childhood, adolescent, and young adult cancer. EJC 2021 154:316

2 de Beijer IAE, et al. on behalf of the PanCareSurPass consortium. European recommendations for short-term surveillance of health problems in childhood, adolescent and young adult cancer survivors from the end of treatment to 5 years after diagnosis: a PanCare guideline. J. Cancer Survivorship 2023.