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).