Prognosis of children and young adults with newly diagnosed rhabdomyosarcoma metastatic to bone marrow treated on Children’s Oncology Group studies

Schloemer NJ, Xue W, Qumseya A, Luo LY, Hiniker SM, Lautz TB, Rhee DS, Arnold MA, Venkatramani R. Prognosis of children and young adults with newly diagnosed rhabdomyosarcoma metastatic to bone marrow treated on Children’s Oncology Group studies. Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2023 Dec;70(12):e30701. doi: 10.1002/pbc.30701. Epub 2023 Oct 2. PubMed PMID: 37783659; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC11044821.

Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) is the most common soft tissue sarcoma in children. Metastatic disease occurs in 16% of all RMS cases and has a poor prognosis. There are limited studies examining the outcomes specific to patients with RMS metastatic to bone marrow despite an incidence of 6% at diagnosis. Our study aims to document the outcomes, prognostic factors and clinical courses of children presenting with RMS metastatic to bone marrow treated on Children’s Oncology Group (COG) cooperative trials. We performed a retrospective analysis of the patients diagnosed with RMS metastatic to bone marrow between 1997 and 2013 enrolled on one of four COG RMS clinical trials of D9802, D9803, ARST0431 and ARST08P1.