Clinical profile, outcome and challenges in the management of pediatric Burkitt lymphoma: a single center experience

This study was conducted with the aim to assess the clinico-pathological profile, treatment outcomes and the challenges faced in Low Middle Income Countries (LMIC) during management of pediatric Burkitt lymphoma cases on intensive chemotherapy protocol. This was a single center retrospective analysis of pediatric Burkitt lymphoma cases (age p value = .016). On multivariate analysis of prognostic factors affecting survival, CNS involvement (p value = .03) and median time from diagnosis to treatment initiation more than 30 days (p value = .04) were significantly associated with poor outcome. Incidence of culture positive febrile neutropenia episodes was 28.2% of which 69.2% infections were caused due to carbapenem resistant gram-negative organisms. In our study, although the outcomes in risk group A and B patients were comparable to LMB 96 treatment results, the outcome in risk group C was considerably poor primarily due to advanced disease at presentation and delayed diagnosis. The critical challenges that we faced in our cohort were delayed diagnosis, treatment cost affordability, poor nutritional status, and high infection related mortality.