Annual Report 2020

Department of Pediatric Surgery

Minoru Esaki, Akihiro Yoneda, Junnosuke Maniwa

Introduction

 The Department of Pediatric Surgery was newly established in April 2016 to provide surgical treatment for pediatric cancers. Our team specializes in surgeries for a wide variety of tumors including neuroblastomas, nephroblastomas (renal tumors), hepatoblastomas (liver tumors), Ewing sarcomas, rhabdomyosarcomas, osteosarcomas, germ cell tumors, metastatic lung tumors and all other types of tumors arising in children and adolescents.

The Team and What We Do

 The outpatient service of our department treats newly diagnosed patients and provides follow-up treatment for patients who received surgery. The number of patients is shown in Table 1. Weekly conferences are held with pediatric oncologists from the Department of Pediatric Oncology.

 We particularly specialize in performing surgical operations on infants and small children but we also care for adolescent and young adult (AYA) patients in collaboration with expert surgeons on our adult team. Table 2 shows the number of surgical cases under general anesthesia.

Research activities

 Our staff members play key roles in nationwide collaborative studies. We are also involved in translational research activities on immunotherapy for neuroblastomas and other solid tumors.

Table 1. Number of patients between April 2020 and March 2021

Table 2. Type of procedure between April 2020 and March 2021

Clinical trials

 We have a leading role in clinical trials conducted by the Japanese Childhood Cancer Group (JCCG), with particular interest in neuroblastoma.

Education

 We are accepting trainees and students worldwide and nationwide.

Future Prospects

 Pediatric cancers that are cured by surgery alone are very rare. Multidisciplinary treatment combined with surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy is often needed to treat such disease. We will collaborate with the Department of Pediatric Oncology and other related departments, and will provide advanced treatment for pediatric and AYA patients with cancer.

List of papers published in 2020

Journal

1. Iehara T, Yoneda A, Kikuta A, Muraji T, Tokiwa K, Takahashi H, Teramukai S, Takimoto T, Yagyu S, Hosoi H, Tajiri T. A phase II JN-I-10 efficacy study of IDRF-based surgical decisions and stepwise treatment intensification for patients with intermediate-risk neuroblastoma: a study protocol. BMC Pediatr, 20:212, 2020