Maria de Spengler
Panama Children’s Hospital, Panama
Title: Solid tumors in children challing educational problem
Biography
Biography: Maria de Spengler
Abstract
Introduction: Early detection and prompt reference efforts, attention of premonitory symptoms and suspicion by the general physician are the main source to increase survival ratel
Methods:We revised three information sources: the tumor report of the Pathology, the registry of Panamá Children’s Hospital, and the social database of the Foundation for children with cancer of Panamá.
Inclusion criteria: Patients between 1 day to 16 years of age in the period of time between the first of January 1999 and December 31, 2016.
Exclusion criteria: Patients that at the moment of diagnosis were more than 16 years of age. Patients who are loss of the follow-up consultation. We used database Excel of Microsoft Office 2010. We calculated the percentage of patients that are alive and with no evidence of neoplasia at January 1, 2017. We divide our study in two periods January 1999 to December 2009 (Period A) and January 2010 to December 2016 (Period B), in order to study if the influence of an Educational Program was related to the survival rate. The survival rate is calculated dividing the number of patients that are alive and with no evidence of neoplasia by the total number of patients. The national educational program was performed by the efforts of four main sources: the foundation for kids with leukemia and cancer, the program for infant
health of the ministry of health in Panamá, the children’s cancer center of Texas Children’s Hospital whose contribution was to send and special educational team of physicians and nurses and to favor an educational exchange between Texas and Panamá for Pediatric Oncologists and the Central America Group of Hematologist and Oncologist whose achievement was the sharing of common treatment protocols that can be actually used in any Central America Country.
Results:
Table.1: Number of cases and Percentage of Survival of both periods.
Conclusion: Thanks to a combined educational effort, the percentage of survival has increased for our patients with Osteosarcoma, Rabdomiosarcoma, Neuroblastoma and retinoblastoma. The percentage of survival had slightly diminished CNS tumors and of germ cell tumors. As a nation we have enter a process of continual improvement both technical and educational that can only be maintained making the quality of treatment a national priority.