Infants With Bone and Soft Tissue Tumors Have Higher Treatment-Related Mortality

A retrospective population-based study in Pediatric Blood & Cancer examined age-related outcomes in children with extracranial bone and soft tissue neoplasms diagnosed in Canada between 2001 and 2020. Using the Cancer in Young People in Canada database, researchers compared infants younger than 1 year with older children. The cohort included 1,102 children, of whom 146 (13.2%) were infants. Outcomes included treatment-related mortality, relapse, event-free survival and overall survival.

The most common infant tumor subtypes were fibrosarcoma (28.8%), malignant rhabdoid tumors (26.7%) and rhabdomyosarcoma (25.3%). Treatment-related mortality was higher in infants than older children (4.8% versus 1.5%; hazard ratio 4.03; p = 0.003). Overall survival was lower at 1 year (63.7% versus 81.5%) and 5 years (56.9% versus 62.0%), both reported as p < 0.001. Five-year cumulative relapse incidence was numerically lower in infants, but the difference was not statistically significant (26.3% versus 38.4%; p = 0.19).

After adjustment for tumor subtype and metastatic status, infancy remained associated with poorer overall survival (adjusted hazard ratio 1.61; 95% CI 1.13–2.31). These findings highlight treatment-related mortality as an important concern in infant cancer care. However, the retrospective design limits causal interpretation, and the available abstract provides no treatment-specific analyses or event-free survival results. Full text was unavailable for assessment.