Treatment of Childhood Rhabdomyosarcoma

Optimizing care for patients with rhabdomyosarcoma requires a multidisciplinary team approach. All patients require chemotherapy and effective local tumor control. Because rhabdomyosarcoma can arise from multiple sites, surgical care decisions and radiotherapeutic options must be tailored to the specific aspects of each site and should be discussed with a multidisciplinary team, including representatives of those specialties and pediatric oncologists. These multidisciplinary discussions ideally occur at the time of diagnosis, either before or after the diagnostic biopsy and before the initiation of therapy.

Local control remains a significant problem in children with rhabdomyosarcoma. The predominant site of treatment failure in patients with initially localized rhabdomyosarcoma has been local recurrence. In the Intergroup Rhabdomyosarcoma Study Group (IRS)-II trial, of patients who achieved a complete remission with chemotherapy and surgery, almost 20% of patients with Groups I to III disease relapsed locally or regionally, and 30% of patients with Group IV disease relapsed locally or regionally. Local or regional relapses accounted for 70% to 80% of all relapses in children with Groups I to III disease and 46% of all relapses in patients with Group IV disease.[1]

Both surgery and radiation therapy (RT) are procedures primarily focused on local tumor control, but each treatment has risks and benefits.

For more information about surgical and radiotherapeutic management of the more common primary sites, see the Surgery and RT by Primary Site of Disease (Local Control Management) section.

Treatment options for childhood rhabdomyosarcoma include the following: