[Assessment of independence in daily life in pediatric oncology by FMH-questionnaire].

Therapy-related late effects are important for therapeutic decisions in pediatric oncology. We quantified the degree of impairment of independence in daily life in children with cancer. The German questionnaire "Fertigkeitenskala Münster/Heidelberg (FMH)" is a standardized tool for measurement of motoric and verbal functioning. A point-score leads to an age-related percentile ranking similar to typical percentiles in pediatrics. We used the FMH in 215 cancer patients (mean age 10.3 years, range 0.5-23.5 years, 56.3% male). Diagnoses were leukaemia (n = 91), bone tumors (n = 33), nephro- and neuroblastoma (n = 21), brain tumors (n = 18), lymphoma (n = 23), rhabdomyosarcoma (n = 11) and others (n = 18). The average time to answer the questionnaire was 4.5 min. Patients with brain and bone tumors showed significant lower percentile scores compared to patients with other diagnoses (p < 0.05). The FMH-scores increased with time since diagnosis (n = 215). This trend was confirmed in a longitudinal study over one year (n = 29). Quantitative assessment of independence and functioning in patients with cancer--especially in multicenter-studies--is possible. Because of therapy-related late effects this seems to be of special importance in brain and bone tumor patients.