Abstract

Purpose: Children with cancer experience physical and emotional health consequences which influenceing their body image and self-confidence, and decrease the ir physical, mental and social functions. The current study will highlights precise evaluation of physical and psychological impacts of cancer among children that necessary to guarantee excellent care and efficient therapy and to find best ways to decrease these impacts.

Methods: The literature search revealed 1200 topics for initial investigating. After reviewing the topics for their overall topics related to physical and psychological impacts of cancer on children and Adolescents and Strategies to decrease these effects, due to exclusion criteria remained 20 studies for literature review.

Results: The results showed that childhood cancer leads to physical and psychological negative impacts on children such as pain, fatigue, social isolation,deterioration of self-concept, body image disturbance, nausea, discomfort, anxiety and stress and to reduce this effects some strategies suggested and tested such as hospital clowns, play, encourage kids’ participation in healthcare, social therapy, massage therapy, animal-assisted intervention, mandala drawing, the home-based multimodal symptom-management program cognitive -behavioral therapy and problem-solving skills training.

Conclusion: Healthcare professionals and their families must provide psychological therapies and physical support to children diagnosed with cancer in order to improve their quality of life and lessen the negative consequences of the disease and treatment. Therefore, need to further studies to establish these strategies in line with progress and development in health care services.

Key words: physical and psychological effects, cancer, children