Chemotherapy affects the development of pathological scarring after general thoracic surgery in children

Globally, a great number of children have been suffering from physical dysfunction and psychological stress due to uncontrollable scar growth and a lack of effective modalities. Despite chemotherapy's established role as a primary treatment for pathological scarring in adults, its efficacy in preventing or minimizing scar formation in paediatric patients remains underexplored. This retrospective cohort study aimed to refine the relevant clinical evidence and investigate the effect of chemotherapy on pathological scars in children. In this single-centre retrospective cohort study, the data of children aged ≤18 years who underwent thoracic surgery at the Children's Hospital of Fudan University between 1 January 2018, and 31 December 2021 were assessed. The primary outcome was pathological scarring, and the secondary outcomes were subjective symptoms accompanying pathological scarring, such as pain and itching. To mitigate indication bias, analysis was performed by inverse probability weighting (IPTW) log-binomial regression models. The cohort comprised 102 children, among whom 36 received adjuvant chemotherapy perioperatively, while 66 did not. Under the IPTW model, a statistically significant difference in pathological scarring incidence was observed between the chemotherapy and non-chemotherapy groups (16.7% vs. 29.4%, p = 0.027). And the children received chemotherapy post-operatively had a lower relative risk of pathological scarring, compared with those received chemotherapy both before and after surgery (19.8% vs. 28.8%). Adjuvant chemotherapy treatment after surgery may reduce the incidence of post-operative pathological scarring in children.