Childhood Oral and Maxillofacial Primary Cancer at The Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Accra, Ghana

Abstract

Background: There is limited information on the incidence and distribution of childhood malignant oral and maxillofacial tumours. The aim of this study was to carry out a retrospective evaluation of the prevalence and distribution of oral and maxillofacial cancers seen in children at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), a tertiary hospital.
Patients and method: The selection criteria was all patients who were seen at the department 15 years old and younger with an orofacial tumour (benign and malignant), between January 1998 and December 2007. The clinical and histopathological charts of all
these patients were retrieved from the records office of the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMFS) Department of KBTH. There was no difficulty retrieving the charts. Their age, sex, location of tumour, signs and presenting symptoms and histopathological report were recorded and transferred to a Microsoft Excel* spread sheet and analysed.
Results: 118 charts of the patients met the selection criteria. 34 (28.8%) of them were records of patients whose lesions were reported as malignant neoplasms. The mean age was 9.4 years. The male: female ratio was 1:1. Histologically, 73.5% (N=25) of the lesions were diagnosed as lymphoma. 50% (N=17) were Burkitt’s lymphoma (BL). 20.6% (N=7) were rhabdomyosarcoma (RBD). There was one each of osteogenic sarcoma (OSC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). 29 (85.3%) of the children underwent chemotherapy, three children with RBD were treated by surgery and adjuvant radiotherapy.
Conclusion: BL is the most common malignant maxillofacial cancer found in Ghanaian children and chemotherapy is the commonest mode of treatment.