Pediatric carcinoid tumors of the lungs: A descriptive analysis.

Abstract

e22017 Background: From 1973 to 2012, the prevalence of neuroendocrine tumors in children was found to have increased by approximately 6-fold when using the Surveillance Epidemiology, and End Results. While carcinoid tumors in adults are mostly indolent, pediatric carcinoid tumors tend to carry worse prognoses. Our goal for this study is to describe the population of pediatric patients with pulmonary carcinoid tumors. Methods: We used the National Cancer Database to identify pediatric patients diagnosed with carcinoid tumors of the lungs between 2004-2020. Analysis was conducted with SPSS to determine frequency of cases in different demographics. Survival was assessed using Kaplan-Meier curves with significance set at p < 0.05. Results: Of the 125 patients identified, 55% of the patients were male and 45% female. Pulmonary carcinoid tumor patients were predominately white accounting for 80% of all cases. Black patients accounted for 14% of cases. The ages of diagnosis ranged from 3-17 years of age with the mean being 14.5 years of age. The majority of patients were diagnosed during their teenage years–84% were between the ages of 13 and 17 at diagnosis. Only one case was observed in a patient of age 6 or under. The median survival was 89 months. Univariate analysis revealed no significant difference in survival was seen in sex, race, or insurance groups. Charlson-Deyo score, however, did impact survival, where patients with a score of 2 had lower median survival time (36 months) compared to patients with a score of 1 (121 months) or 0 (87 months). Conclusions: Pediatric pulmonary carcinoid tumors are more commonly seen in white patients with most diagnoses occurring during patients’ teenage years (13-17). Age, sex, and race did not have a significant effect on survival although a Charlson-Deyo score of 2 was indicative of a worse prognosis when compared to a score of 1 or 0.