Current Pediatric Research

Background: Neuroblastoma (NB) is the most common non-CNS tumour of childhood originating from the neural crest cells. The overall survival rate of patients with the disease remains suboptimal, especially for those with advanced disease. For the high risk group, the long-term survival rate is less than 40% in most studies. From the experience of many tertiary centres, complete excision of tumour correlates with better survival. We present our experience of operated NB patients.

Methods: Records of all the patients who were operated in our department from January 2014 to December 2022 were searched from the hospital medical records and reviewed retrospectively. Collected data was analyzed and results were obtained.

Results: The study included 30 patients. Male and female ratio was 1.2:1. Most common presentation was incidentally detected lesions (69%) followed by abdominal mass (25%). Most common site was retro peritoneum (56%) followed by left adrenal (37.5%) and right adrenal glands (6%). Patients were operated mostly in the age range of 1-3 years with mean age of 29.2 months. Most of the patients were having stage I and II disease, only 2 patients were diagnosed stage IV disease preoperatively. There were no major intra-operative events or post-operative complications. One patient of stage III progressed to stage IV on follow up and one patient expired among all the operated patients who had stage IV disease. Overall survival was 93.75%; event free and disease free survival was 87.5%.

Conclusion: Surgery for NB though challenging is effective mode of treating the patients with curative intent. It can safely be used even for advanced stage diseases after chemotherapy and can be accomplished quite safely in experienced hands.

Author(s): Waseem Jan Shah*, Shoiab Nisar Malik, Akshit Sudanshu, Nisar Ahmad bhat, Ajaz Ahsan Baba, Gowhar Nazir Mufti, Raashid Hamid, Fayaz Ahmad, Tariq Ahmad Mir, Ubayar Nabi

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