الفهرس 
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Abstract
Background: Lymphoma among children has been receiving ever-growing attention among researchers, not just because of this growing importance form the epidemiological point of view, but also of the major advances observed in diagnosis and treatment. Lymphomas are the third most frequently diagnosed malignant neoplasm among children in the age frange from 0 to 15 years with 60% of cases being Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) and 40% being Hodgkin Lymphoma (HL).
Objectives: It was the scarcity of existing data in the literature illustrating the behavior of NHL and HL among children in our Pediatric Oncology Unit at Zagazig University Hospitals that induced us to carry this study with the intention of describing the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of these patients, assessing their survival and searching for possible prognostic associations with the variables under analysis.
Patients and methods: This work was retrospective analysis of clinicopathological features and treatment results of 106 patients with lymphoma diagnosed at Pediatric Oncology Unit at Zagazig University Hospitals from 2006 to 2010. They met all inclusion and exclusion criteria for enrollment into this study. In our study, the following data were analyzed: age, sex, origin, general examination, laboratory investigations, chest X-ray, pelvi-abdominal CT, histologic subtype, tumor stage, primary tumor site, therapeutic scheme and response to treatment (survival, death and relapse).
Results: Our results showed that during the period between 2006 to 2010, 106 patients with lymphoma were admitted to Pediatric Oncology Unit at Zagazig University Hospitals, they were divided intol 74 (69.8%) NHL and 32 (30.2%) HL with male predominance and commonest age group of lymphoma was found among 5-10 years with a mean of 6.33 ± 3.1 years. Lymphoma was common in rural areas. With relation to histological subtypes, Burkitt type NHL was observed to be predominant affecting 66.2% (49 patients) of the patients and mixed cellularity HL was predominant affecting 53.1% (17 patients) of the patients. In the current study, results showed that lymph node enlargement is the most common clinical presentation followed by abdominal mass. The LMB96 was the most used protocol, since Burkitt lymphomas predominated in this group of patients and ABVD was the most used protocol among Hodgkin lymphoma patients. Our study showed that 86.5% (64 patients) of NHL achieved remission, while 90.6% (29 patients) of patients studied with HL achieved remission and 9 cases of NHL was died shortly after diagnosis (early death) and only one case of HL was died after 2 months of diagnosis. Our results showed that relapse occurring among one case of NHL and 2 cases of HL.
Conclusion: We found that around 12.2% of our deaths in NHL and 3.1% in HL occurred early being defined as early deaths that were associated with infectious complications, related to advanced disease stages.