Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>As a disease of genetic mutations that increase cumulatively with age yet respond to improving therapies, cancer challenges health providers in the support they offer to optimize quality of life across the life cycle. Beyond coping with the inherent existential threat to life and well-being that the diagnosis brings, anti-cancer treatments bring their own burden in the form of a host of long-term and late-onset side effects. A long-term effect is illustrated by chronic fatigue, whether arising from persisting anemia, cardiomyopathy, or atrophied muscles. A late effect is illustrated by a secondary cancer, whether resulting from chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Care of the survivor includes supporting lifestyle changes to habits like smoking, alcohol excess, obesity or inactivity and a program of rehabilitation that steadily restores quality of life. Monitoring for early detection of recurrence requires concomitant therapy to control fear of recurrence, optimize mood, promote adjustment, and restore value to life. A program of surveillance and health promotion requires education, survivorship care planning, and instillation of self-management strategies so that patients, families, and providers collaborate in optimizing health sensibly, informed by national guidelines, screening, self-management, and primary care support. Targeted therapies for cancer improve survivorship; parallel development of survivorship care is necessary to sustain whole-person and family-centered well-being, optimize quality of life, and ensure continued joy, creativity, and fulfilment. This volume explicates survivorship care in practical and systematic ways to guide physicians, nurses, general practitioners, psychologists, and all health providers.</jats:p>