
Paediatric Malignancies
674-677
Correspondence
Niharika Pattnaik
Assistant Professor of Pathology,
Konaseema Institute of Medical Sciences,
Amalapuram - 533201
East Godavari Dist, Andhra Pradesh, India.
Phone: 09000269074.
E-mail: debnit2005@yahoo.co.in
Objective: Paediatric malignancies, being a significant cause of death among children, this study was performed with an aim to find out the profile of childhood cancers in western Orissa, India for a period of two years (2005-2007).
Materials and Methods: The paediatric population (0-14 yrs of age), which was diagnosed to have malignancy, in the Department of Pathology, V.S.S Medical College, Sambalpur, Orissa, India was the study group.
Result: Paediatric malignancies comprise 4.4% of the cancer load of all the age groups. The incidence of different variants, based on the International Classification of Childhood Cancer (ICCC), showed laeukaemia as the commonest cancer, to constitute 45.45% of the total cancer load, followed by soft tissue sarcomas -11.82%, malignant bone tumours- 10%, lymphomas- 8.17%, retinoblastomas- 5.45%, neuroblastomas- 4.55%, Wilms’ tumour- 4.55%, germ cell tumours -4.55%, CNS neoplasms- 3.64%, hepatoblastomas- 0.91% and squamous cell carcinomas of the skin- 0.91%, in the decreasing order of their frequencies. The age distribution showed an incidence of 31.82% in the 0-4 years age group, 24.55% in the 5-9 years age group and 43.64% in the 10-14 years age group. The sex ratio showed a male predominance.
Conclusion: The frequency of different diseases which are detected at a particular centre is not an exact reflection of the disease spectrum of that population, but it can give a rough estimation of the trend. There exist regional and geographic differences in the incidence and the histologic types of paediatric cancers.