Pediatric medical traumatic stress is a set of children’s and their parents’ psychological and physiological responses to pain, injury, serious illnesses, and other experiences with the medical environment. Medical trauma might occur in direct interaction with the medical environment. Pediatric cancer patients have the highest prevalence of PMTS as the illness involves a set of stressors that trigger many negative psychological reactions. Posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are one of the most common psychopathologies among cancer patients. We examined the incidence of medical trauma in children with cancer and their parents due to coping with a serious illness and treatment complications. We analysed the following risk factors for PTSS: selected groups of individuals, medical interventions, complications, and treatment modalities. The study involved 183 parents of 133 children and 63 children and adolescents who were treated between 2009 and 2019 at Clinical Department of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology of Pediatric Clinic in Ljubljana. Furthermore, we included a control group of children and parents without experiences of severe chronic illness. We collected the data using The Intensity of treatment rating scale 2.0 [IRT-2], PTSD checklist for Children/Parent [PCL-C/PR], The PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 [PCL-5] and The Child PTSD Symptoms Scale for DSM-5 [CPSS-5]. PMTS is frequently present in both, children and their parents, regardless of the cancer type, treatment duration, treatment outcome, and child’s age. Mothers, patients with relapse, patients who were diagnosed after age 5, patients with more intensive treatment, and parents of the latter are at higher risk for PMTS occurrence. Additionally, we found a decreasing trend of traumatic responses after five or more years post cancer diagnosis and that parents are more traumatized than children. Our findings will contribute to the systematic prevention of PMTS and medical trauma and to endeavour to use trauma-informed care.
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