Introduction:

Radiotherapy is one of the oldest treatments used nowadays for curing patients suffering from malignant neoplasias, but it must be carefully selected in pediatric patients.

Objective:

To evaluate the response of radiotherapy treatments in children with head and neck tumors.

Methods:

A descriptive, lineal retrospective study was carried out, in which were included 26 patients admitted in the Service of Oncosurgery of “William Soler” Hospital from January, 2000 to January, 2013. These patients presented different kinds of head and neck malignant tumors; their ages were among 1 and 18 years. The long term toxic effects of radiotherapy were taken into account, being those associated or not to concurrent or adyuvant chemotherapy, and to surgery.

Results:

All the patients received physical external radiotherapy. 73,1 % of the cases (most of them with a diagnosis of lymphoma) received adyuvant chemotherapy and 7,7 % had concurrent chemotherapy. This last one in two patients: one with facial sarcoma and the other one with parotid carcinoma. Just five patients (19.2 %) had surgery and radiotherapy as treatment: two cases with neuroblastoma, one case with facial sarcoma, and two cases of hemangiopericytomas.

Conclusions:

This study has demonstrated the usefulness of radiotherapy in the control of head and neck malignant diseases in children.

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