The adolescent with cancer--at the edge of no-man's land

The cancer journey of the adolescent patient can be difficult and lonely. Provision of services to these patients should occur at the interface between paediatric and adult oncology, although for the individual, that interface can seem like a gap into which he or she may too readily fall. In the UK, the needs of adolescent patients have become more widely recognised in the past decade, but they continue to have a low priority on the national agenda. Recent guidelines on cancer referral made specific reference to children's cancers, but none to cancer in adolescents. The need for dedicated services for these patients has been accepted, but the resources to meet this need have rarely been identified. We explore current and future patterns of care and service provision for adolescents with cancer in the UK.