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 conutry 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.
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