MALIGNANT TUMORS IN PEDIATRIC POPULATION OF UKRAINE: TRENDS AND STRUCTURAL FEATURES.

Abstract

A study cohort includes 31,537patients aged 0-19years at thetime of diagnosis in1989-2019, registered in Ukrainian population. Themajor groups of malignancies in thechild population are presented by leukemia, lymphomas, central nervous system (CNS) tumors, epithelial neoplasms, bone cancer and soft tissues sarcomas. There were observed no gender differences in cancer incidence, except germ cell tumors and trophoblastic tumors, gonadal malignancies, as well as some other malignant epithelial neoplasms, with their proportion being twice higher in thefemale population. Our analysis showed a trend towards increase in theincidence of leukemia, CNS neoplasms, neuroblastoma, trophoblastic tumors and epithelial malignancies; decrease in theincidence of lymphomas and bone neoplasms; stabilization in theincidence of malignancies of liver and kidneys. Thedynamic changes in cancer mortality in thestudied cohort were observed, namely, thedecrease of mortality from leukemias and lymphomas in males (but not in females), along with theincrease of mortality from CNS neoplasms, neuroblastoma, soft tissues sarcomas and germ cell tumors, regardless of gender. Theanalysis and presentation of theepidemiological data on children's malignancies implementing ICCC-3 classification for all relevant records in theNational Cancer Registry of Ukraine allows for evaluating themajor trends of cancer incidence and mortality in Ukrainian pediatric population, taking into account tumor morphology, topography, gender and age.