Mortality profile in pediatric malignancies: a 11 year retrospective study

Background: Malignancy is one of the leading causes of childhood deaths in developed nations while diarrheal and respiratory infections continue to compete in many developing nations. Since the state of Goa, has health statistics comparable to the western world, an attempt has been made to look at the childhood cancer mortality in proportion to overall deaths in the only tertiary care hospital in the stateMethods: In the absence of a population registry, information was obtained from the hospital mortality statistics during the period from January 2007 to December 2017.Results: A total of 118 cancer deaths were seen over a period of 11 years with a male/female ratio of 1.34:1. The proportion of cancer deaths to total deaths due to any cause, per year was 11.9%. Most of the deaths were noted in the 1-10 years age group (53.4%) with maximum deaths seen' in hematological malignancies (50.8%).Though sepsis was the immediate cause of death in 42(35.6%), a significant drop was noted in last 5 years wherein it was observed to fall from 22.8% in the initial 6 years to 12.7% in the latter 5 year period.Conclusions: Proportion of cancer related deaths were seen to reduce over the study period with a significant drop, in sepsis, as the major cause. Simple measures to control sepsis may help to reduce cancer mortality.