Over the past 12 months, Friends of Rosie has funded research at The University of Manchester looking at ways to decrease the risk of facial disfiguration in children with cancers in the head and neck.
Dr Marianne Aznar and her team have been looking at how we could enable ‘smarter’ radiation treatments, leading to a decreased risk of facial disfiguration in the future.
We caught up with Dr Aznar, to find out what the research team have discovered over the past year.
Children with head and neck cancers are given radiotherapy as part of their treatment. This can cause the bones on that side of a child’s face to grow differently due to the radiation. This can have a huge impact on their future quality of life, and self-image, and also some functional impacts on the growth of the jaw and teeth.
The aim of this research was to develop a new method of measuring changes in a child’s face when they’ve received radiotherapy. The team have looked at the use of routine images acquired as part of a child’s follow-up appointments, as well as measuring facial asymmetry in such a way as to link it to the radiotherapy the child has received.
None of this would be possible without you, our supporters, and the kind donations you give to help children with cancer.
