Neonatal tumours: a single-centre experience

Solid tumours are uncommon in the neonatal period. We present our experience of managing neonatal tumours in a tertiary reference centre to study the incidence, pathology and types, efficacy of treatment, and impact of antenatal diagnosis on the management in our practice in a retrospective study of case-notes and pathology reports. Eighty-three neonates with solid tumours were seen over a 45-year period (1955-1999); 62 (74%) presented at birth. Only 11 were diagnosed antenatally. Teratomas were the commonest type (n = 33, 40%) followed by neuroblastomas (NB) (14), renal (13), soft-tissue (10), hepatic (4), and miscellaneous tumours (2). Twenty-three (28%) were malignant, 50% of these being NBs. Surgery remains the mainstay of treatment. Chemotherapy has also become safer. Therapeutic complications were responsible for 50% of deaths before 1986; from 1986 onwards, there has been no therapy-related mortality. Only one-third of the recent cases were diagnosed antenatally. Counseling the family and in-utero transfer is the best option. In our limited series, there was no significant difference in management and outcome in the antenatally-diagnosed cases. The small numbers of neonatal tumours seen by individual centres underline the need for an international effort to optimise therapy and improve understanding of these tumours.