Study of Mortality Rate and its Causes among Egyptian Children and Adolescents with Cancer

Abstract

Abstract Background There is little evidence about the burden of childhood cancers in Egypt. Knowledge about the current disease burden of childhood cancers is crucial to priorities cancer control plans and improve survival. Objective To describe the frequency of deaths among children diagnosed with cancer in the last 10 years. Patients and Methods This retrospective descriptive study was conducted in Pediatric Hematology /Oncology Unit, Children's Hospital, Ain Shams University. The data of 500 patients was collected from the database in the period from 1st September 2011 to 30th September 2021. The study included 500 Children less than 18 years diagnosed as solid and hematological malignancies. Results The median age of the included patients was 4.25 years, males represented 54.4%. The most common etiology of malignancies among the included patients were: acute lymphoblastic leukemia (31.8%) and acute myeloid leukemia (714.6%). Death was evident in 71.4% of the included patients. Among the dead cases 106 (74.12%) had late death; that occurred 5 years or more after diagnosis and 37(25.4%) had early death; that occurred within 30 days after diagnosis of the first neoplasm. The higher mortality was reported among acute lymphoblastic leukemia (52; 36.4%), acute myeloid leukemia (28; 19.6%), neuroblastoma (13; 9.1%) and brain tumors (10; 7.0%). Comparison between living and dead childhood cancer patients as regards the demographic and clinical data showed no significant difference regarding; age, gender, and residence (P-value= 0.591, 0.122 & 0.077, respectively). Relapse was significantly increased among dead cases representing 32.9% (P-value= 0.000). Conclusion In our institute, childhood cancer patients’ mortality rate was 28.5% in the last 10 years. Early death occurred in (25.8%) among them; infection was the leading cause of death, while primary malignancy was the main cause of death among those who died late, which is almost comparable with international studies. Furthermore, the overall survival of our childhood with cancer was (67.30%) at 5 years from diagnosis. This is relatively better than the previous published Egyptian data and reaching international figures.