Demographic characteristics and prognostic factors in pediatric-type sarcomas; A 7 year single institutional experience and comprehensive review of the current literature

Background: due to limited clinical data in pediatric-type sarcomas [rhabdomyosarcoma, Ewing's sarcoma, PNET, and desmoplastic small round-cell tumor], the aim of this study was to evaluate the demographic characteristics and identifying prognostic factors for survival

Materials and Methods: we retrospectively reviewed 110 patients with pediatric-type sarcomas. Overall and disease free survival was analyzed with the Kaplan-Meier method and log rank test. To identify prognostic factors for overall and disease free survival, multivariate survival analyses using a Cox's proportional-hazard regression model was performed

Results: in this study mean age of patients were 20.30 years [SD=13.61; range, 1-83 years]. The survival data of 54 patients [49.1%] were obtained with median survival of 27 months. 3 and 5-year survival rate of these patients were 41.5% and 28.3% respectively. Recurrence of disease [P=0.006] and Ewing sarcoma subtype [P=0.018] were significantly associated with poor overall survival and location of the lesion in the upper extremities [P=0.007] and trunk [P=0.005] were significantly associated with a lower disease free survival

Conclusion: with multivariate analysis, the authors determined that recurrence of disease and Ewing's sarcoma subtype are poor prognostic factors for overall survival and site of origin for disease free survival among patients with pediatric-type sarcoma. In addition, gender, patient's age, and size of tumor had no significant impact on overall and disease free survival

Correlation of serum alkaline phosphatase with clinicopathological characteristics of patients with oesophageal cancer

Oesophageal cancer is endemic in some regions of the Islamic Republic of Iran and efforts have been made to find factors that play a role in its prognosis. We retrospectively examined the correlation of serum alkaline phosphatase [ALP] levels with several clinicopathological characteristics of 207 cases of oesophageal carcinoma. The mean ALP level in patients with lymph node involvement was significantly higher [141 [SD 77] U/L] than with node negative cancers [116 [SD 63] U/L]. Patients with ALP level > 165 U/L were 3.29 times more likely to have lymph node involvement than patients with ALP level