ecancermedicalscience

Research

Suboptimal outcomes of group III paediatric genitourinary rhabdomyosarcoma-experience from treatment with a multimodal protocol in low- and middle-income setting

28 Nov 2025
Annesha Chakraborti, Badira Cheriyalinkal Parambil, Venkata Rama Mohan Gollamudi, Maya Prasad, Siddhartha Laskar, Nehal Khanna, Jifmi Jose Manjali, Sajid Qureshi, Mukta Ramadwar, Poonam Panjwani, Akshay Baheti, Vasundhara Patil, Sneha Shah, Girish Chinnaswamy

Genitourinary-Rhabdomyosarcomas (GU-RMS) are challenging to treat due to the probable lifelong sequelae of local therapy. Western-world data show 3-year event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS) of 77% and 86%, respectively, for localised disease, with dismal outcomes for metastatic disease. We studied the clinical profile, outcomes and prognostic factors of GU-RMS treated with a multimodal protocol. Treatment-naïve children ≤ 15years with biopsy-proven GU-RMS treated from January 2013 to June 2022 were retrospectively analysed. Local therapy performed at 10–12 weeks of induction was radiotherapy (RT) and/or surgery. Fifty-two patients with a median tumour size of 5.5 cm (range, 3.4–9.2 cm) were analysed. Four patients (7.8%) had alveolar histology. The bladder was the commonest site of primary (36.5%). Group distribution: I-7 (13.4), II-1 (1.9%), III-35 (67.3%) and IV-9 (17.3%). Local therapy was surgery in 11 (21.5%), RT in 25 (49%) or both in 14 (26.9%) patients. With a median follow-up of 56 months (95% confidence interval (CI): 49.1%–63.1%), 4-year EFS for groups I–IV, were 100%, 50% (95% CI: 41%–59%) and 33.3% (95% CI: 2.6%–64%) (p = 0.01), respectively. The corresponding 4-year OS were 100%, 72% (95% CI: 56.4%–87.6%) and 33.3% (95% CI: 2.6%–64%) (p = 0.007), respectively. Relapses were locoregional-4 (7.7%), metastatic-5 (9.6%) and combined-4 (7.7%). Tumour size > 6.45 cm significantly affected outcomes in the localised cohort (hazard ratio = 4.1, 95% CI: 1.38–12.1, p = 0.01). Outcomes of group III GU-RMS in children treated on a multimodal protocol in our study are suboptimal compared to those from co-operative group trials, probably affected by large tumours at presentation, warranting alternative strategies for optimisation of survival.

Related Articles

Soumitra Shankar Datta, Jigeesha Ghosh, Dishari Choudhury, Suvro Sankha Datta, Prateek Jain, Sakshi Adhia, Indranil Mallick, Sanjit Agrawal, Sanjay Garg, Shouriyo Ghosh, Arijit Nag, Arnab Mukherjee, Soumita Ghose, Sayantani Das, Rima Mukherjee, Sujit Sarkhel, Pattatheyil Arun
Israel Fernandez-Pineda, Simone de Campos Vieira Abib, Tristan Boam, Diego Aspiazu Salinas, Samer Michael, Justin Ted Gerstle, Steven Warmann, Jorg Fuchs, Alyssa Stetson, Gloria Gonzalez, Greg Tiao, Timothy B. Lautz, Rodrigo Chaves Ribeiro, Roshni Dasgupta, Jaime Shalkow-Klincovstein, Cristian Puerta, Andrew M. Davidoff, Marianna Cornet, Julien Grosman, Aurore Pire, Sabine Sarnacki, Thomas Blanc, Abdelhafeez H Abdelhafeez
Ajay Kumar Yadav, Anshuman Pandey, Rahul Singh, Hareesh Shanthappa Nellikoppad, Bhanu Pratap Singh
Charles M Balch, Ning Liao, Dennis S C Lam, Jeffrey N Weitzel, Rui-Hua Xu, Gerhardt Attard, Paul A Bunn, Alexander M M Eggermont, Jie He, Yuko Kitagawa, Soon Thye Lim, Eduardo Cazap, Bernard Esquivel, Xianqun Fan, Louis W C Chow, Edward S F Liu, Hector Martinez Said, John E Niederhuber, Isabel T Rubio, Ashraf Saad Zaghloul, Oscar G Arrieta, Riccardo A Audisio, Geerard L Beets, Felipe J F Coimbra, Jorge E Gallardo, Judy E Garber, Alessandro Gronchi, Volker Heinemann, Allison W Kurian, Miriam Mutebi, Masaki Mori, Funmi I Olopade, Piotr Rutkowski, Mansoor Saleh, William M Sanchez, Raymond Sawaya, John F Thompson, Gerald Tumusiime, Carlos S Vallejos, David C Whiteman, YiLong Wu, King-David T Yawe, Nayef Awad Al Zahrani, Odysseas Zoras, Banu K Arun, Carol J Fabian, Jeffrey E Gershenwald, William J Gradishar, Jin He, V Suzanne Kimberg, Ronald M K Lam, Victor H F Lee, Domenica Lorusso, Tony S K Mok, N D Perrier, Hope S Rugo, Cornelia Ulrich, Chandrakanth Are, J Vignat, I Soerjomataram