More than one-third of parents of children with neuroblastoma think their child is likely to be cured, despite a minimal chance of survival, a US study reveals.

The findings also suggest that parents choose intensive therapies for their children because they don’t understand the severity of the disease and poor prognosis, the researchers say.

“The majority of parents markedly overestimated their child’s chances of cure, with 24% of parents reporting that their child had a greater than 90% likelihood of cure,” they wrote in Cancer.

The study involved a face-to-face survey of 95 parents, mainly mothers (81%), attending nine paediatric cancer centres across the US. All had children with recurrent (76%) or refractory (23%) high-risk neuroblastoma.