Introduction With the increase in the number of pediatric cancers in India, there is a need for a multimodal approach involving various disciplines of therapy in which radiotherapy is one of the important areas of treatment. As there is a paucity of studies in South India about the profile of pediatric cancer patients who have undergone radiotherapy the present study was undertaken.

Methods A record-based retrospective study was conducted at the department of pediatric hematology-oncology and radiotherapy at a tertiary care hospital in South India using a data abstraction form which consisted of sociodemographic details of study participants, primary diagnosis, confirmed diagnosis, site of radiotherapy, current status of the patient, etc. Chi-square test or Fisher's exact test was used to find out significant association between current status of study participants and various determinants influencing it.

Results Highest proportion, n = 35 (30.4%), of cases were in the age group of 10 to 14 years. Among them, 48 children were primarily diagnosed to have hematolymphoid malignancy while 67(%) had solid tumor. Majority of the patients, n = 110 (95.6%), were treated on curative intent.

Conclusion Radiotherapy remains an important modality of cancer-directed therapy in children with cancer. Radiotherapy still forms an integral part of cancer-directed treatment in children with cancer as demonstrated in our population.

Ethical clearance for the study was obtained from the Institutional Ethics Committee of Kasturba Medical College Manipal and Kasturba Hospital Manipal vide letter no: IEC2: 35/2023 dated January 13, 2023. All the tenets pertaining to the Declaration of Helsinki were followed.

Data regarding this study can be obtained from the link: 10.6084/m9.figshare.25251583.

The conceptualization and data curation was done by S.K.B., V.B., D.A.P., A.K. while formal analysis was done by S.K.B., V.B., M.A., A.P. Investigation, methodology, project administration was completed by S.K.B., V.B., A.P., K.G., U.V. and resources, software, supervision, validation, visualization: S.K.B., V.B., A.P., K.G., U.V. The original draft was written by S.K.B., V.B., A.P.

Received: 14 March 2024

Accepted: 02 April 2024

Article published online:
06 May 2024

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