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

UNLABELLED: The creation of a central bank of personalized information of cancer patients, including children, allowed to obtain objective data and establish continuous cancer surveillance in the child population in Ukraine. The aim of the study was to analyze the dynamics of cancer incidence (1989-2019) and mortality (1999-2019) based on the 3rd revision of International Classification of Childhood Cancer (ICCC-3).

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A study cohort includes 31,537 patients aged 0-19 years at the time of diagnosis in 1989-2019, registered in Ukrainian population.

RESULTS: The major groups of malignancies in the child 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 the female population. Our analysis showed a trend towards increase in the incidence of leukemia, CNS neoplasms, neuroblastoma, trophoblastic tumors and epithelial malignancies; decrease in the incidence of lymphomas and bone neoplasms; stabilization in the incidence of malignancies of liver and kidneys. The dynamic changes in cancer mortality in the studied cohort were observed, namely, the decrease of mortality from leukemias and lymphomas in males (but not in females), along with the increase of mortality from CNS neoplasms, neuroblastoma, soft tissues sarcomas and germ cell tumors, regardless of gender.

CONCLUSIONS: The analysis and presentation of the epidemiological data on children's malignancies implementing ICCC-3 classification for all relevant records in the National Cancer Registry of Ukraine allows for evaluating the major trends of cancer incidence and mortality in Ukrainian pediatric population, taking into account tumor morphology, topography, gender and age.