Sociodemographic and clinical profile of children submitted to radiotherapy at the Instituto Nacional do Câcer (Brazil)

Full text: Introduction: INCA is a reference center for cancer treatment in Rio de Janeiro, both for adults and children, and is part of the highly complex network of the Unified Health System (SUS). The treatment of childhood cancer is multidisciplinary, and like chemotherapy and surgery, radiotherapy is part of this approach, being used in about 40% of patients, at some point in the treatment, either with curative or palliative purposes. Objective: This study aimed to establish the sociodemographic and clinical profile of children who underwent radiotherapy as part of their cancer treatment. Methods: An observational and retrospective study of pediatric patients from the National Cancer Institute, aged up to 18 incomplete years, treated with radiotherapy, between 2014 and 2017, was developed. The variables were divided into sociodemographic and clinical. Continuous variables were tested for normality to establish the use of parametric or non-parametric tests (t test or Mann–Whitney U; ANOVA or Kruskal-Wallis test), while categorical variables used Fisher's test to define the relationship between them. Multiple response analyzes were also used for those variables with more than one response option for each patient. The Generalized Linear Model (GzLM) was used to verify the mean ages at diagnosis and during radiotherapy in different tumors and to verify the association between the tumors and the sociodemographic characteristics of the children. Results: The median age at diagnosis was 93 months or 7.7 years (mean: 101.81 months, 95%CI: 96.01-107.61, SD: 59.51) and in radiotherapy it was 110 months or 9.1 years (mean:114.78 months, 95%CI:108.89-120.68, SD:60.52) and the mean time between diagnosis and radiotherapy was 12.65 months, with a predominance of male (n=237; 58.2%) and brown race (n=203; 49.9%). Brain neoplasms were the most common (n=135; 33.2%), and among them, Medulloblastoma was the most seen tumor (n=34/135; 25.2%). Most patients came from public services and had acceptable housing conditions, generally with running water and basic sanitation and all with electricity, but with almost half of the families declaring family income of up to one minimum wage. It was not possible to verify the association between socioeconomic factors and different childhood tumors. Conclusion: The profile of the analyzed children was similar in the four years of observation. This study found that INCA is capable of absorbing about 73% of the demand in pediatric oncology in the state of Rio de Janeiro. (author)