Characteristics and Event Free Survival in Pediatric Patients with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Background: Cancer is the leading cause of mortality in pediatric, despite that it is still highly curable and in the last years there was significant increase in event free survival among pediatric cancer not just because of the improvement of chemotherapeutic protocol but rather because of improvement in supportive care. Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia is the most common pediatric malignancy and it is different from adult ALL by better overall prognosis and it is seem to be a highly curable disease when compared with other solid tumors in pediatric. Objective: To obtain local data of some demographic features, immunophenotypic pattern and risk category of children and adolescent with ALL and the correlation of each of this characteristic with the 3-year event free survival and to compare our result with local or international data. Patients and Methods: A cross-sectional study conducted on 257 pediatric patients with ALL over a period of six year in Sulaymaniyah GovernorateKurdistan region of Iraq from January 2007 to January 2013 were carried out to analyze the some demographic features, immunophenotype and the 3-year EFS. Data analyzed using SPSS software; version 13 and P-value obtained by Chi-square test. Results: The mean age at diagnosis was 6.9±2.9 years and peak age group in our study was between 1–4 years with male predominance. Precursor B-cell was more common than T-cell. 3-year EFS was (71.98%) with significant correlation between gender and 3-year EFS; but no statistical correlation between the 3-year EFS in one hand and the age group, risk group and immunophenotype of ALL in other hand. Conclusion: The ALL patterns and characteristic together with the 3-year EFS of our studied pediatric patients were similar to that observed in the regional and international study