Evaluación de síntomas en niños y adolescentes con cáncer: revisión integrativa

Children and adolescents diagnosed with cancer face a number of changes in different aspects of their lives, and experience multiple physical and psychosocial symptoms from the disease and its treatment, affecting their quality of life and that of their caregivers. Objective: To investigate the state of the research aspect related to the subject of symptom assessment in children and adolescents with cancer. Methods: Integrative review of the scientific production generated between 2007 and 2018 in the databases Embase, Ovid, Medline, Pubmed, Science Direct and Scielo in English, Spanish and Portuguese. It included 50 articles that provide information on symptom assessment in pediatric population with cancer diagnosis. Results:  Research on tools that evaluate the manifestation of symptoms, adapted and validated to paediatric population are limited. Conclusions: Children and adolescents with cancer present with symptoms during the different stages of the disease and treatment. Studies on these symptoms in the local context are scarce, therefore it is necessary to validate specific scales for this population, to describe the symptoms includingclinical variables and perceived quality of life that serve to guide opportune interventions in their management.