Incidencia de cáncer infantil en una ciudad colombiana

Abstract

Introduction: Pediatric cancer is a rare disease and only represents between 0.5 % and 3 % of malignant neoplasms in the world. The main goal of this study was to describe the behavior of incidence of pediatric cancer in the administrative units of the urban area of Santiago de Cali in the period 2009 to 2013. Materials and methods: Maps with the distribution of standardized incidence rates by age for each administrative unit are presented. We propose a methodology to obtain the predictive statistical probabilities of observing equal or greater amounts of pediatric cancer cases in a time period equal to the study, using Bayesian statistical techniques. Results: During the period of study, were observed 350 cases of pediatric cancer in the city (37 % of leukemia), corresponding to standardized incidence of new 121 cases per million of individuals aged under 15 years. Conclusion: Incidence rates of pediatric cancer observed for the city were lower than many of those reported in the literature, however, should be considered the fact that all studies do not share the same conditions for data collection in terms of periods time and the definition of child population.