Childhood Acute Leukemia profile in Low Middle Income Country

Background : In Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), pediatric cancer represents a significant cause of death, with Leukemia being the most common malignancy in children. Our purpose was to describe AL profile in Senegal in the context of childhood cancer. Procedure : All data about childhood cancer were registered in Redcap software A global database for epidemiological history of all new patient that visited the pediatric -oncology care center of Dakar and eight other specifics databases for each main cancers had been created (Acute Leukemias, Nephroblastomas, Retinoblastomas, Neuroblastomas, Non-Hodgkin lymphomas, Hodgkin lymphomas, Rhabdomyosarcomas …….). Results : From January 2 2021 to September 30 2022, the overall number of childhood cancer cases was 357; which amounts to approximatively 204 children with confirmed cancer per year. The most common cancer found among children was Acute Leukemia (AL) which represents about 30% of all cancers (97 patients). A median age of 60 month and a ratio of males to females diagnosed with AL equal to 1.22 were found. Complete Blood cell Count and examination performed found that the main abnormality were hyperleukocytosis, with a mean number of white blood cells of 67.7g/L. Microscopic examination showed a large amount of blast cells that sometimes represented more than 90% of WBC. Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia was more frequent in Senegal (64% of AL). During these 21 month of follow up, 18 patients (18,5%) relapse and 38 (39%)died at different steps of traitement. Conclusion : In Senegal, Immunophenotyping significantly improve AL diagnosis. the implementation of cytogenetics is currently underway.