This is the tenth official document of the SIOP Working Committee on psychosocial issues in pediatric oncology, instituted in 1991. It is addressed to the pediatric oncology community. Children clearly have a right to participate in medical decisions regarding their own treatment, based on the developmental level of the child. The objective of these guidelines is to encourage physicians to share with the child developmentally relevant medical information specific to that particular child's health status, in the context of the child's own culture, so that he or she can actively participate in the decision-making process regarding his or her own health. These guidelines, geared toward this objective, discuss the child's right to medical information, the parents' legal responsibility for but not exclusive right over the child's health, and ways of encouraging the younger child's active participation in his or her own health care at an age-appropriate level of understanding. For adolescents, there should be a full and legally mandated power to make their own decisions regarding medical treatment.

Background: To validate the Argentinean Spanish version of the PedsQL™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales in Argentinean children and adolescents with chronic conditions and to assess the impact of socio-demographic characteristics on the instrument's comprehensibility and acceptability. Reliability, and known-groups, and convergent validity were tested.

Perinatally-acquired HIV-infected adolescents showed significant psychosocial and behavioural health risks that should bring attention to prevention and health care programmes. An earlier disclosure to children could favour a better psychological adjustment and a better treatment adherence. Future studies are needed to assess the relationship between vertically acquired HIV-infection and hyperactivity.

Quality‐of‐life assessment is being used increasingly in clinical research. This is true particularly in the case of survivors of cancer in childhood, where improving survival rates have raised concern regarding the long‐term effects of medical cure. Health‐status assessment and quality‐of‐life instruments have been developed for the most part in the English language, thus necessitating their translation and cultural adaptation for use in non‐English‐speaking countries. Our purpose was to develop a set of Spanish‐language questionnaires for application with a population of children with cancer in a tertiary‐care center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Health Utilities Index (HUI), a conceptual framework for assessing health status, was chosen for this study. Three distinct questionnaires, based on the HUI, were used: a self‐completed one for health professionals and teachers (15Q) to report assessments of children and 2 interviewer‐administered ones, for child survivors (42Q) to report assessments about their own health status and parents (45Q) to report assessments about their children's health status. The original translations and reviews were accomplished with direct oversight by members of the HUI Group, to ensure conceptual equivalence. The instruments were then tested in Buenos Aires by application to staff of the hematology‐oncology service, childhood cancer patients and the parents of childhood cancer patients. Several modifications were made based on these tests. We concluded that the translation and cultural adaptation of these instruments was adequate for use with the groups tested in a pilot survey of survivors of childhood cancer in Argentina. Int. J. Cancer Suppl. 12:119–124, 1999. ©1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

No differences in information processing speed, sustained attention, short-term memory and QoL functioning were observed between children previously randomized to continuous ART vs. PTI in the PENTA 11 trial.