Cancer Patterns among Adolescents and Young Adults Attending at Different Hospital of Dhaka City

Abstract

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) defines an adolescent as someone between 10-19 years of age, and youth as someone aged 15-24 years of age and there is evidence of an increase in the cancer incidence rate among this group over the last quarter of the 20^th century. Present study conducted to find out the pattern of cancer among the adolescent and youth attending in selected hospital with tertiary level cancer care hospital in Dhaka city. Materials and methods: The presentcross-sectional study conducted in the Department of Clinical Oncology, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University and National Institute of Cancer Research and Hospital, Dhaka between the period of February 2010 and January 2011.  Histopathologically confirmed adolescent and young cancer patients attending in the selected hospital and willing to participate and gave consent were included in this study. A predesigned questionnaire used for data collection regarding medical history, clinical examination and investigation were recorded. Data were analyses using windows-based computer software devised with Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS-13) (SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL, USA). Results: Mean ± SD of age of the respondents was 22.5± 4.1 years with a range of 15-29 years. Among the respondents 64 (56.1%) were male and 50 (43.1%) were female. Most common cancer information-site of the respondents was lymph node (21.1%) followed by colorectal (10.5%). Other common cancer information-sites of the respondent’s bone, ovary, testis, blood, soft tissue, breast, salivary gland, thyroid and GTT were 9.6%, 7.9%, 7.0%, 6.1%, 6.1%, 4.4%, 3.5%, 3.5%, and 3.5% respectively. Common histopathological diagnosis was non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (15.8%) adenocarcinoma(15.8%), Hodgkin's lymphoma (8.8%) and soft tissue sarcoma (8.8%). Conclusion: Most common non-Hodgkin lymphoma, testis cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, ovarian cancer, colorectal cancer, soft tissue sarcoma, leukemia, bone sarcomas and nonseminomatous germ cell tumours account for 95% of the cancer in 15 to 29 age group in this study.