A new research study on children with cancer aims to understand the scope of the sleep challenges they may cope with in order to develop therapies to address the problem, CBC News reports.
Fiona Schulte, a psychologist at Alberta Children’s Hospital, said she has come across many other children and families going through the same thing.
She and other researchers with Alberta Health Services and the University of Calgary are trying to better understand the scope of the problem so that they can develop therapies to address the issue.
“Clinically, I know that it’s a problem. What’s nice about this research is that it will show us systematically that it’s a problem, and hopefully look at why.”
This study is unique because it examines sleep patterns in short-term survivors, who are between two and seven years off their therapy, she said.
Past studies have documented broken sleep patterns in those who are 15 to 20 years past treatment, as well as those who are newly diagnosed, she said.
Schulte hopes this research will enable doctors to address sleep issues at the point of diagnosis and reinforce that during treatment.
