Abstract

In many countries cancer is now the second to third most common causes of death in the children over the age of one year. And it has been recently become apparent that there is much variation in the frequency ratio of tumors from country to country and within different communities in childhood as there is in adult cancer. In this connection, a statistical survey was performed on the primary malignant tumors of Korean infants and children based on biopsy, and bone marrow materials. In this study total 237 cases of the primary malignant tumors(male 151 and female 86 cases) diagnosed at the Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, Seoul National University during the period of ten years, 1960 to 1969 were examined. Among the malignant tumors in both sexes, the relative frequency ratio is highest for leukemia(51.9%) and thereafter in order of frequency ratios, for lymphoma(12.2%), Wilms’ tumor(7 2%), soft tissue tumor(5.9%), carcinoma(5.1%), brain tumor or gonadal and germ cell tumor(3.8% respectively), retinoblastoma(3.0%) and sympathetic tissue tumor(2.5%). The relative frequency of malignant tumors among Korean infants and children show some different points as compared to those of Western European populations. Among lymphomas, lymphosarcoma is by far the most frequent type, whereas in British Hodgkin’s disease and lymphosarcoma occurred about equally. In Korea malignant tumors of the brain and neuroblastoma are much less frequent. Hepatocellular carcinoma is more frequent in Korea and Japan than in the West. In Korea and Japan Ewing’s sarcoma is rare or much less frequent than osteosarcoma, whereas in European countries including British the two diseases are almost equally frequent during childhood.