Introduction :
Cancer among infants younger than one year of age represents a unique
problem with distinct epidemiological, clinical and genetic
characteristics compared with cancer in older age groups.(1) Cancers
occurring in infants differ substantially from those in older children
in terms of anatomic site, histological features and behaviors.(2) The
prognosis for infants is often worse than for older children, even if
the pathologic diagnosis is the same(3). In addition, those under the
age of 1 have been shown to have a higher mortality from childhood
cancer.(4)
Infant cancer incidences and trends in the United States (U.S.) were
reported in 1997(5) and 1998(6) covering the periods from 1973-1992 and
1979-1991 but these data did not include survival rates. To the best of
our knowledge, there is no comprehensive updated report that
specifically focuses on cancer incidence trends and survival among
infants in the U.S.(7-9) Because infants continue to be at a
disproportionately higher risk of early cancer mortality,
notwithstanding pediatric oncology treatment advances in the last two
decades,(4, 10) it is critical to examine what happened in this cancer
cohort in order to explore how survival rates can be improved.
Therefore, the aims of this study were to describe the cancer incidence,
temporal trends, and survival among infants (<1 year old) over
the 40-year period from 1975 to 2014 in the U.S. using SEER data to
identify demographic and geographic variations.
Materials and Methods :