Neuroblastoma in Turkish children: experience of a single center

The survival of the patients with neuroblastoma has improved in last few decades. But still it depends on various clinical and biological factors. To assess the clinical features and trends in survival, the data for 500 newly diagnosed patients between January 1972 and December 2004 from a single center were retrospectively analyzed.

Histopathologic subtypes were neuroblastoma (NBL) in 462 patients (92.4%) and ganglioneuroblastoma in 38 patients (7.6%). The median age was 2.9 years and Male/Female ratio was 1.3/1. Primary tumor sites were abdomen, thorax, pelvis, neck, and others with the frequency of 72.2%, 14.9%, 3.8%, 3.2%, and 5.9%, respectively. There were 30, 49, 133, 257, 31 patients with stage 1, 2, 3, 4, 4S disease and their 10-year survival rates were 100%, 75.8%, 34.1%, 6.5%, and 59.4%, respectively. The outcome has significantly improved according to 10-year periods. The 5-year overall survival rates were 14%, 26.1%, 39.2%, and 52.4% for the years of 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and after 2000. Surgical procedure involving total or near total tumor removal improved the survival (P=0.002). Both 5-year overall survival and event free survival rates were higher when partial resection was performed, especially in stage 3 disease (P=0.002 and P=0.02). In multivariate analysis, age above 18 months at diagnosis (P=0.01), stage 4 disease (P<0.001), abdominal primary tumor site (P<0.001), NBL subtype in histopathology (P=0.001), responsiveness to chemotherapy (P<0.001) positive or high Vanillyl mandelic acid levels (P=0.02) and male sex (P=0.008) were the determinants of poor prognosis.

The survival rates in children with local disease are comparable with the results of developed countries; however, the results in children with advanced disease are still not satisfactory. To improve the outcome, especially in children with advanced disease, more effective chemotherapy regimens and molecular therapies should be investigated. Sharing the knowledge and capacity building to improve the treatment results in NBL are also critical for developing countries.