Treatment

The treatment your child will receive consists of chemotherapy (drugs), surgery and sometimes radiotherapy.

If your child has localised disease he/she will be given chemotherapy every three weeks for a total of seven treatments. This regimen is called OPEC/OJEC. The letter in each name stands for the drugs that are used in each treatment. OPEC contains Vincristine, Cisplatin, Etoposide and Cyclophosphamide. OJEC contains Vincristine, Carboplatin, Etoposide and Cyclophosphamide.

Your child will receive four courses of OPEC and three courses of OJEC. Each course of OPEC is usually given in hospital and takes three or four days to give. However, OJEC only takes one day to give and is usually given as an outpatient.

In between each course of treatment we will be monitoring your child and there will be times when your child needs to be readmitted to hospital with a complication of treatment (infection or sore mouth).

After your child has received four courses of OPEC/OJEC, he/she will undergo an operation to remove the remainder of the tumour.

If your child has widespread (metastatic disease) you will be invited to take part in the study, looking at use of more intensive chemotherapy. This includes four courses of CAV (Cyclophosphamide, Adriamycin, Vincristine), followed by three courses of PVP (Cisplatin, Etoposide).

This will be followed by surgery and high dose chemotherapy with reinfusion of stem cells (a type of bone marrow transplant).