[Talking about death to children with cancer].
BACKGROUND
Paediatric cancer treatment includes a multidisciplinary intervention in all treatment phases, and particularly in the palliative phase. One of the main skills is information. This study tries to explore the level of information that children on palliative care have about their own death.


METHODS
We retrospectively collected the psychosocial variables of 45 oncology patients who died as inpatients in the Hospital Niño Jesús Hospital (HNJS) between 2006 and 2007. The concept of death is analysed according to each child development stage.


RESULTS
We found a relationship between the age of the children and the information they have about their own death, as well as a statistical significance between the information that the child has and the information received from their parents. Children between 3 to 6 years old have more information about their own death than children between 7 to 11 years old.


CONCLUSIONS
Our results confirmed that the older age group had more information on their imminent death. However children between 3 to 6 years old have more information than children between 7 to 11 years old. Probably as children between 3 to 6 years old have a magical concept of death, it makes it easier to talk about their terminal phase. Over-protection and the difficulty to talk about death shows differences between what children know and what parents tell them about their palliative phase.
Hernández Núñez-Polo
M
M
Unidad de Onco-Hematología y Trasplante de progenitores hematopoyéticos, Hospital Infantil Universitario Niño Jesús, Madrid, España. psicooncohnjs@gmail.com
Lorenzo González
R
R
Catá del Palacio
E
E
López Cabrera
A
A
Martino Alba
R
R
Madero López
L
L
Pérez Martínez
A
A
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003643:Death; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D009369:Neoplasms; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D014342:Truth Disclosure