Pediatric rhabdomyosarcoma : 7-year experience at King Hussein Medical Center

Abstract EN

Objective: To evaluate the clinical characteristics and treatment outcomes of children with rhabdomyosarcoma diagnosed and treated at King Hussein Medical Center.

Methods: This retrospective descriptive study was conducted by the hematology-oncology unit of pediatric department at Queen Rania Al Abdullah Hospital for Children at King Hussein Medical Center.

The medical records of children with rhabdomyosarcoma were reviewed over a period of 7 years, between April 2005 end of March 2012.

The age of children included in the study was less or equal to 14 years at the time diagnosis.

The charts of 52 patients were reviewed regarding: patient demographics, tumor characteristics, risk stratification, treatment outcomes.

Descriptive analysis using frequencies was used to describe the study variables.

Results: There were 27males and 25 females with M: F ratio of 1.08:1.

The median age at diagnosis was 5 years (range 0.25-13.75 years) with 80.8% below the age of 10 years .

Head and neck was the most common primary site of tumor (46.2%) , followed by the extremities (21.2%).

Pathologically, embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma was the most frequent subtype ( 90.4%).

The stage frequencies were as follows: stage I ( 25.0 % ) , stage II (9.6 % ) , stage III ( 36.5 % ) and stage IV ( 28.8 %) .

Regarding postsurgical grouping classification, group III and IV were the most prevalent, constituting 42.3% and 28.8% respectively.

The 3- year event - free survival rate for patients was 55.8 % , and the 3- year overall survival rate was 61.5 % .

Conclusion: Advanced stages (stage III and IV) and postsurgical groups (group III and IV) were the most commonly encountered in pediatric patients, which showed a negative effect on event free survival and overall survival rates.

Epidemiological features other than gender distribution were close to the previously reported data