Objective: To investigate the clinical characteristics and treatment methods of rhabdomyosarcoma in children and the efficacy of the methods. Methods: The clinical data of 30 children with rhabdomyosarcoma who were admitted to our hospital from August 2013 to August 2017 were retrospectively analyzed. The clinical characteristics were summarized, and the curative effect and prognosis were evaluated. Results: Among all the children (N=30), there were 20 males and 10 females, with a median age of 3.5 years. As to the primary site, there were 13 cases of head and neck, 11 cases of trunk, three cases of urogenital system and three cases of limbs. There were 25 cases of embryonic type, 4 cases of alveolar type and one case of polymorphic type. As to the clinical stage, there were one case of stage I, 9 cases of stage II, 13 cases of stage III and 7 cases of stage IV. There were one case of low risk, 19 cases of medium risk and 10 cases of high risk. Eight cases received surgery alone, 22 cases received combined treatment of surgery and chemotherapy (the chemotherapeutics followed three schemes, low-risk group (VAC+VA), moderate risk group (VAC) and high risk group (alternating use of VDC and IE). Among all the cases (N=30), there were 14 cases of complete remission (CR), five cases of partial remission (PR), four cases of stable disease (SD), and 7 cases of progressive disease (PD). The CR rate was (N=14, 46.7%). The three-year overall survival (OS) rate was (N=19, 63.3%). The clinical efficacy and prognosis of children receiving surgery and chemotherapy were better than those of children receiving surgery alone, and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05). Conclusion: Rhabdomyosarcoma in children frequently happens in the head, neck and trunk. Embryonic type is the main pathological type of rhabdomyosarcoma. Comprehensive and standardized treatment based on surgery and chemotherapy is an important way to improve the curative effect in the treatment of rhabdomyosarcoma in children. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.5.1829 How to cite this:Ning Z, Liu X, Qin G, Wei L, Li X, Shen J. Evaluation of clinical efficacy of Chemotherapy for Rhabdomyosarcoma in children. Pak J Med Sci. 2020;36(5):1069-1074. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.5.1829 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Background: Appendiceal adenocarcinoma is a very rare type of tumor, often asymptomatic in the early stages of development. Surgical resection is the most preferred intervention against appendiceal nonmucinous adenocarcinoma, but the efficacy of post-operative adjuvant chemotherapy is still unclear because the cancer is rare. Accordingly, we sought to characterize appendiceal non-mucinous adenocarcinoma profile that confers a better survival advantage for post-operative chemotherapy.Methods: We analyzed patients with appendiceal non-mucinous adenocarcinoma in the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database, histologically diagnosed for the cancer between 2004 and 2015.Nearly half of the patients first underwent surgery and thereafter received post-operative chemotherapy.Logistic regression, Kaplan-Meier, univariate and multivariate Cox analysis were performed to evaluate the odds ratio for the propensity of patients underweening chemotherapy, whereas hazard ratios were used to evaluate the overall as well as cancer-specific survival.Results: Of the 724 patients with appendiceal non-mucinous adenocarcinoma who underwent surgery, 301 (41.6%) received post-operative chemotherapy. Notably, patients with metastatic appendiceal nonmucinous adenocarcinoma were more likely to receive chemotherapy (OR =7.42, 95% CI: 5.34-10.39, P<0.001), similar to those with poor pathologically differentiated cancer types (OR =2.10, 95% CI: 1.49-3.00, P<0.001). However, univariate and multivariable Cox regression analyses found no significant overall survival and cancer-specific survival advantage for patients put on postoperative post-operative chemotherapy. In the disease stage and pathological differentiation groups, only patients with widespread metastatic (Stage IV) but well differentiated tumors displayed better 3-year (11.9% in overall survival, 11.5% in cancer-specific survival) and 5-year survival rate (7.8% in overall survival, 6.8% in cancer-specific survival) to post-operative chemotherapy.Conclusions: Staging and grading of appendiceal non-mucinous adenocarcinoma is invaluable in guiding the rationale of post-operative chemotherapy. Findings of this research support the view that only patients with both of widespread metastatic but well differentiated appendiceal non-mucinous adenocarcinoma should be considered for post-operative chemotherapy. Nonetheless, further prospective multidisciplinary clinical trials are necessary to further discern the use chemotherapy after surgery in appendiceal non-mucinous adenocarcinoma patients.