Pediatric brain tumor care in a Sub-Saharan setting: current poise of a precariously loaded dice

• Objective: To evaluate the current status of pediatric brain tumor (PBT) care and identify determinants and profiles of survival and school attendance Methods: An 8-year institution-based prospective longitudinal study. All cases investigated with neuroimaging and treated were enrolled. Data was analyzed with SPSS (Inc) Chicago IL, USA version 23. Chi Square test, One-way ANOVA and confidence limits were used to evaluate associations at the 95% level of significance. Ethical approval for our study was obtained Health Research Ethics Committee of our hospital. Results: Among 103 patients enrolled, 92 satisfied our study criteria. There were 45 males and 39 females, M: F = 0.8. The mean age was 9.5 ± 2.1 years 95%CI with a range of 7 months to 16 years. The most common symptom was headache for supratentorial lesions (73%) and gait disturbance (80.2%) for infratentorial lesions. More tumors were supratentorial in location 51 (55.4%), 35 (38.1%) were infratentorial and 6 (6.5%) were transtentorial. Craniopharyngiomas (n = 23), medulloblastomas (n = 22) and astrocytomas (n = 15) were the most common tumors. Hemoglobin genotype (AA and AS) had some influence on tumor phenotype FT, P = 0.033. 76 cases were microsurgically resected while 16 patients were treated with radiotherapy alone. The 30-day mortality for operated cases is 7.2 ± 0.7%. Overall 1-year and 5-year survival was 66.7 and 52.3%, respectively. School attendance, performance and outcome varied among treatment subgroups. Conclusion: Survival profile in this series suggests some improvement in comparison to previous studies from our region, Hemoglobin genotype profiles may signature paediatric brain tumor phenotypes in our setting. © 2020, © 2020 The Neurosurgical Foundation.

Ämnesord

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Medicinska och farmaceutiska grundvetenskaper -- Neurovetenskaper (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Basic Medicine -- Neurosciences (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Klinisk medicin -- Neurologi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Clinical Medicine -- Neurology (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Klinisk medicin -- Cancer och onkologi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Clinical Medicine -- Cancer and Oncology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

micro neurosurgery

Pediatric brain tumors

radiotherapy

school performance

survival

hemoglobin A

academic achievement

adolescent

Africa south of the Sahara

Article

astrocytoma

brain tumor

cancer mortality

child

childhood cancer

craniopharyngioma

ependymoma

female

genotype phenotype correlation

glioma

headache

human

infant

longitudinal study

major clinical study

male

medulloblastoma

microsurgery

neuroectoderm tumor

neuroimaging

neurologic gait disorder

oligodendroglioma

overall survival

patient care

priority journal

prospective study

school attendance

survival rate

survival time

treatment outcome

tumor localization

Pediatric brain tumors

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