Neuroblastoma - the Tawam Hospital experience

ABSTRACT

Over the past two decades, there have been significant improvements in the survival of children with different types of cancer. Neuroblastoma is the exception, as in spite of many different kinds of chemotherapeutic regimens, the prognosis of advanced neuroblastoma remains unsatisfactory. This study is an analysis of our experience in the management of 53 children [25 males and 28 females] with neuroblastoma in this part of the world. Their ages at presentation ranged from birth to 10 years [mean 2.9 years]. The majority of our patients [83%] had intra-abdominal neuroblastoma. Five had intrathoracic neuroblastoma, 2 had intracranial neuroblastoma, 1 had oropharyngeal neuroblastoma, and one had metastatic neuroblastoma without a known primary. The distribution of our patients according to stage was as follows 3 stage I, 5 stage II, 9 stage III, 33 stage IV and 3 stage IV-S. All our patients with stage I, II, III, and IV-S survived. A large number of our patients [62.3%] presented with advanced stage IV neuroblastoma, and this contributed to the high mortality rate [34%] in our series. The exact incidence of neuroblastoma in the United Arab Emirates [UAE] is not known, but it accounted for 7.5% of the total number of malignancies in the paediatric age group. The recently established cancer registry in the UAE should prove useful regarding the incidence and prevalence of cancer in the future