Pediatric Cancers that need radiotherapy in Iran: 30 years of one hospital data analysis

Objective: Several studies have been published on the epidemiology of childhood malignancies worldwide. The primary objective of this study is to determine the relative frequency of pediatric cancers in Iran.

Methods: Using a retrospective approach, all confirmed cases of malignancies aged 14 years old or less at the time of first referral to the department of radiation oncology of Jorjani hospital entered to the study. Registered pediatric cancers from 1972 to 2001 were classified into 12 groups according to the International Classification of Childhood Cancer (ICCC).

Results: Among 1881 registered malignancies, leukemia was the most common form (36.8%). Thereafter, in descending order of frequency were lymphoma (16.6%), CNS (14.2%), kidney (7.1%), soft tissue (5.8%), bone (5.2%), retinoblastoma (4.9%), sympathetic nervous system (3.5%), epithelial (2.3%), and germ cell tumors (2.1%). Only five patients (0.3%) had liver cancer.

Conclusion: Like other similar studies worldwide, leukemia, lymphoma, and CNS tumors were the most common types of childhood cancers in our study. Since relative frequency of cancers in referred patients to a radiation oncology department cannot give a precise estimation about cancer prevalence in the country, establishing a national cancer registry can lead to achieve more accurate cancer prevalence and incidence rate.