Childhood Central Nervous System Embryonal Tumors Treatment–for health professionals (PDQ®)

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Changes to This Summary (01/27/2016)

The PDQ cancer information summaries are reviewed regularly and updated as new information becomes available. This section describes the latest changes made to this summary as of the date above.

This summary was comprehensively reviewed.

General Information About Central Nervous System (CNS) Embryonal Tumors

Added text to state that extent of resection after surgery is still currently used to separate patients into risk groups, with patients having more than 1.5 cm2 residual disease stratified into high-risk groups.

Added text to state that in a Children's Oncology Group study of 66 children with supratentorial primitive neuroectodermal tumors, extent of resection was found to be prognostic for those with localized disease at the time of diagnosis (cited Jakacki et al. as reference 53).

Treatment Option Overview for CNS Embryonal Tumors

Revised Table 3 to include molecularly targeted therapy as a treatment option for recurrent childhood CNS embryonal tumors.

Treatment of Newly Diagnosed Childhood Medulloblastoma

Revised text to state that postradiation, high-dose cyclophosphamide supported by peripheral stem cell rescue, but with reduced cumulative doses of vincristine and cisplatin, has resulted in similar survival rates.

Treatment of Newly Diagnosed Pineoblastoma

Added text to state that overall prognosis for children aged 3 years and younger with pineoblastoma remains very poor. All five children younger than 3 years who were treated with chemotherapy on two sequential multicenter prospective clinical trials died (cited Hinkes et al. as reference 6 and level of evidence 2A).

Treatment of Recurrent Childhood CNS Embryonal Tumors

Added text to state that molecularly targeted therapy is a treatment approach for recurrent childhood CNS embryonal tumors.

Added Molecularly targeted therapy as a new subsection.

This summary is written and maintained by the PDQ Pediatric Treatment Editorial Board, which is editorially independent of NCI. The summary reflects an independent review of the literature and does not represent a policy statement of NCI or NIH. More information about summary policies and the role of the PDQ Editorial Boards in maintaining the PDQ summaries can be found on the About This PDQ Summary and PDQ® - NCI's Comprehensive Cancer Database pages.

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Treatment of Recurrent Childhood CNS Embryonal Tumors

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