National Cancer Institute, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute/Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplantation Consortium First International Consensus Conference on late effects after pediatric hematopoietic cell transplantation: the need for pediatric-specific long-term follow-up guidelines.

Existing standards for screening and management of late effects occurring in children who have undergone hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) include recommendations from pediatric cancer networks and consensus guidelines from adult-oriented transplantation societies applicable to all HCT recipients. Although these approaches have significant merit, they are not pediatric HCT-focused, and they do not address post-HCT challenges faced by children with complex nonmalignant disorders. In this article we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of current published recommendations and conclude that pediatric-specific guidelines for post-HCT screening and management would be beneficial to the long-term health of these patients and would promote late effects research in this field. Our panel of late effects experts also provides recommendations for follow-up and therapy of selected post-HCT organ and endocrine complications in pediatric patients.