Overview of Pediatric Oncology Flashcards
- The most common cancer in children, accounting for 30% of all childhood malignancies
- Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) accounts for 80% of cases
Acute leukemia
- second most common of all childhood malignancies
- the most common pediatric solid organ tumor
primary malignant CNS tumors
Most prevelant solid tumor in children outside of the cranium
neuroblastoma
Risk factors for cancer by age?
0-2 years: neuroblastoma
2-5 years: ALL
10-15 years: osteosarcoma, Ewing sarcoma
15-19 years: Hodgkin lymphoma
what are some cancer predispositon disorders?
- Trisomy 21 (leukemia)
- Fanconi anemia (AML and solid tumors)
- Li fraumeni syndrome
- von Hippel- llindaue disease
- the overall risk of malignancy is up to 4x higher than that of the general population
- common tumors: Neurofibromas (most common overall; most are benign); optic pathway gliomas (most common intracranial neoplasm; most are low grasde astrocytomas and occur in kids <6)
Neurofibromas type 1
- vestibular schwannoma (typically bilateral and benign)
- meningioma
- spinal tumors
Neurofibromatsosis Type 2
pathogenesis of ALL
- B cell (85%) > T cell (10-15%)
- consecutive genetic lesions (i.e a sentinel hit followed by a secondary hit, resulting in an arrest in development and abnormal proliferation
- aberrant lymphoblast cell proliferation and survival is the hallmark of ALL
- slight predilection for boys than girls
- Age 2-5 years
- often nonspecific
- common presenting signs and symptoms: Fever, pallor, bruising and/or petechiae, lymphadenopathy, anorexia, weight loss, bone pain, abdominal pain and/or distention, hepatosplenomegaly
ALL
What are some specific scenerios that can be seen in ALL?
CNS involvement
- Headache, vomiting, lethargy, cranial nerve palsies, and/or papilledmea
Testicular involvement
- Persistant, painless, unilateral testicular enlargement/solid mass
- more commonly seen at a time of relapse
Mediastinal mass (esp. T-Cell)
- Orthopnea, facial flushing and or swelling, chest pain and/or stridor
- leukemia
- adrenocortical carcinoma
- CNS tumors
- rabdomyosarcoma
- osteosarcoma
SLAB
Li Fraumeni Syndrome
- retinal and CNS hemangioblastoma
- clear cell renal cell carcinoma
- pheochromocytoma
Von Hippel-lindau disease
Evaluation of ALL
Labs
- Thrombocytopenia and/or anemia
- WBC count can be decreased, increased, or normal (may or may not have circulating blasts, often have a low absolute neutrophil count (ANS)
- elevated LDH and uric acid
Lumbar puncture
- Evaluate for the presence of leukemic blasts in the CSF
- Administer the first dose of intrathecal (IT) chemotherapy
Bone marrow aspirate and biopsy
- Gold standard for diagnosis
- > 25% blasts in the bone marrow (if 25%–> lymphoma)
- perform flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, and cytogenetics
ALL management
- most protocols take 2.5 years to complete
- multi drug regimen
- includes CNS-direted therapy w/IT chemo for all patients
- Fever, malaise, bone pain, lymphadenopathy, hepatosplenomegaly
- gingival hypertrophy, chloroma
- bleeding/DIC (especially common in acute promyelocytic leukemia)
- clinical signs: Bleeding or oozing from various sites, peripheral cyanosis of the fingers or toes (microvascular thrombosis) signs and symptoms of stroke, hemodynamic instability
- lab findings: thrombocytopenia, elevated D-dimer, and PT/INR, decreased fribrinogen
AML
large nuclei, usually with prominent nucleoli; may have auer rods (caused by abnormal fusion of primary granules)
AML
Scant amount of cytoplasm, absence of cytoplasmic granules
ALL