Delay of diagnosis of tumor in children and influence on prognosis. Experience of the AIEOP Centre of Bologna.

Abstract

Abstract Background The Pediatric Oncology and Hematology Unit Centre of Bologna adhere to the Italian Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Association (AIEOP) that since 1989 register any child diagnosed and treated with a malignant tumor, with the aim to quantify the number of cases diagnosed and treated, enter or not to official diagnostic-therapeutic protocols and the extraregional migration in the different Italian centres.Methods Data collection is performed adopting an ad-hoc form named Model 1.01 (Mod.1.01) through an electronic database open in the net to current 47 AIEOP Centres recruits annually about 1400 children (age 0–14 years) and 200 adolescents (age 15–19 years).Results From 1989 to 2018, out of 44730 AIEOP patients < 20 years at diagnosis, 1734 (3.9%) were accrued from Bologna Centre, 1528/1734 (88.1%) resulted resident in Italy and 877/1734 (50.6%) evaluable for this analysis. Most cases were ALL (343, 39.1%), followed by neuroblastoma (126, 14.4%), NHL (98, 11.2%), HL (66, 7.5%), ANLL (64, 7.3%), WT (56, 6.4%) and other types (124, 14.1%).Conclusions In order to evaluate the impact of a delay of diagnosis on outcome, with a mean of 4 days of latency between arrival to the center and diagnosis, OS for patients with < 4 days delay was significantly better than for patients with ≥ 4 days delay (p = 0.0236), resulting furthermore a prognostic factor such as age, diagnosis type and period of diagnosis in a multivariate fashion.