Design and Tools
Nine paediatric oncology units across South Africa participated in the
national retrospective study from the public and private sector.
Anonymised demographic and treatment related data was collected at each
site and included age, sex, anthropometry, symptom profiles,
co-morbidities, stage, tumour site, histology, tumours markers, imaging
techniques, response assessments at first review, timing and extent of
tumour resections, chemotherapy regimens (neo-adjuvant and adjuvant),
number of courses of chemotherapy (both first line and subsequent
regimens), radiotherapy use, GFR and audiology monitoring, treatment
sequelae and interventions, socio-economic status by annual household
income, nature of follow-up and outcome. This information was
centralised into a single dataset exported in comma separated values
format (.csv). Nutritional parameters were defined according to the WHO
Nutritional Landscape Information System (NLIS) Interpretation Guide,
2010 (25), where moderate impact in each category was defined as an
anthropometric measurement more than two standard deviations (SD) below
the WHO Child Growth standards median and where severe impact was
defined as more than three SD below that median. Socio-economic status
was assigned according to the Provincial Government of the Western
Cape’s Federal Acquisition Regulation No.9 of 2017 (PGWC FAR9/2017)
(Supplemental Table 1).