Chemotherapy-induced oral mucositis in children and adolescents: a systematic review

The present systematic review aims to describe the incidence and severity of chemotherapy-related oral mucositis in children and adolescents affected by hematologic and solid tumors.

An electronic search was performed on PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and EBSCO up to the 8th November 2020. The PRISMA protocol was followed for the article selection and inclusion. The risk of bias in individual studies was evaluated through the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. Data were summarized using mean and standard deviation for continuous variables, while categorical ones were described with frequency and percentage.

A number of 9940 records were obtained after the electronic search. Seventeen of them were included in the qualitative analysis after the two stages of screening, while none of these articles was considered eligible for the quantitative analysis. The mean incidence of oral mucositis was 53.6% and it ranged from 16.7 to 91.5%, while severe oral mucositis accounted for the 15.8% (0.0-35.2%) among selected studies. Most of the articles included both patients with solid and hematologic tumors, while only five of them described oral mucositis in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Even the kinds of chemotherapy administered were extremely variable.

In conclusion, about half of the patients submitted to cancer chemotherapy developed oral mucositis with an incidence and severity that varies depending on the primary disease and the kind of drugs administered.