INTRODUCTION
Lymphoblastic lymphoma (LLy) accounts for 15% to 20% of all pediatric non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL) based on statistics from North America and Western Europe1. The prevalence of LLy in other regions of the world is less well defined and there may be important epidemiological and biological variations across different continents2. Even though its epidemiology and outcome is well-characterized in the northern hemisphere2, there is scant information from low and middle-income countries, and no large cohorts of pediatric patients with LLy from Latin America have been previously reported.
Since 2017, the Department of Global Pediatric Medicine at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (St. Jude) actively promotes the St. Jude Global Alliance to centers across Latin America that provide care to children with cancer in the region. This collaboration provides among others, the opportunity to conduct descriptive clinical studies to analyze the cancer characteristics and outcome of Latin American patients in a large transnational population.
The primary objective of the present study is to describe the outcome of children and adolescents treated for LLy at institutions in Latin America participating in the St. Jude Global Alliance. Secondary objectives include describing the clinical characteristics at presentation and assessment of the treatment strategies.