Epidemiological profile of childhood cancer in population attended for a pediatric oncology institution in Salvador-Bahia

Abstract

Childhood cancer is a rare event. It is represents about 1% of all diagnosed cancer in developing countries. Planning of preventive actions requires epidemiological investigations in different geographic areas, which ones are still insufficient, to the disease's definition of occurrence, distribution and risk factors. This study has described the epidemiological profile of childhood cancer in a pediatric oncology institution in Salvador. Prompter of patients, who were accepted in institution from 1995 to 2003, have taken to the study. From 465 investigated patients, 57,8% were boys, 50,8% were brown and 40,1% were born in Salvador's metropolitan area. The most frequent cancer were leukemias, followed by lymphomas and osteosarcomas, 39,5%, 18,9% and 9,9%, respectively. The most important causes of death were, in decreasing order: leukemias, osteosarcomas, lymphomas and neuroblastomas. The global survival rates in the period has represented 51% of investigated population, the number of deaths, 38,3% and the number of treatment abandoning, 2,4%. In 21% of cases, it was related other cases of cancer in family and in 4%, it was registered preview exposure to any kind of toxic substance. However, the analysis of probable risk factors associated to development of cancer was impaired due to the absence of registry of these aspects in most of investigated prompter. Other studies about this theme are necessary to contribute to epidemiology of childhood cancer and are important to associate possible risk factors in specific geographic areas.