Abstract

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 rural tertiary care hospital, for a period of six years (2005-2010) and present hospital based data of pediatric neoplasm. Materials and Methods: The paediatric population (0-14 yrs of age), was diagnosed histopathologically to have neoplasm (benign and malignant), in the Department of Pathology, S.R.T.R. Medical College, Ambejogai, Maharashtra, India were included in study for analysis. Result: Paediatric malignancies comprise 4.8% of the cancer of total number of cancer diagnosed on histopathology. Out of 94 cases in pediatric age group, 61 (64.89%) were benign and 33 (35.11%) were malignant. In present study, most common age group affected was 10-15 year (49 cases) followed by 0-4 year (29 cases) and 5-9 year (16 cases). There were 43 males and 51 females. Out of total 33 histologically confirmed cases of cancers, retinoblastoma and lymphoma comprised 7 cases each, followed by nephroblastoma comprising 6 cases. Bone tumor and Soft tissue tumor were the next most common tumors each accounted 4 cases followed by teratoma (2 cases), mixed germ cell tumor with yolk sac element (1 case), squamous cell carcinoma of anal canal (1 case) and secondaries in lymph node with unknown primary (1 case). In present study, total 61 cases of benign tumor included 3 cases of nerve sheath tumor (4.91%), 2 cases of benign cystic teratoma (3.28%), 2 cases of osteochondroma (3.28%), 36 cases of soft tissue tumor (59.02%) and 18 cases of juvenile fibroadenoma (29.51%). Conclusion: The frequency of different neoplasm which are detected at a particular centre is not an exact reflection of the prevalence of neoplasm in that population, but the information is useful in showing pattern of neoplasm in pediatric age group at the rural hospital, which may help workers at comparative studies in creation of database of pediatric tumors in India.

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