[Functioning tumors of the adrenal cortex in children. Clinical and therapeutic considerations on 11 cases]

Abstract

In the last 20 years, eleven children with adrenocortical functional tumors were treated in the National Children Hospital of Costa Rica. There were nine females and two males and their ages ranged from nine months to 14 years. Eleven patients had features of virilism, five had stigmas of Cushing's syndrome and three hyperaldosteronism. The clinical diagnosis was established given the symptoms, hormonal tests and radiological and imagenological studies. The histologic diagnosis was carcinoma in six by clinical picture in one, and were adenoma in four. Three patients had regional and distant metastases. Four patients with carcinoma were treated by surgery and five received chemotherapy, two of them in presurgical stage, and four received radiotherapy. Two patients with carcinoma are alive and had no evidence of tumor recurrence ten and six years after diagnosis. Five are dead, two of them after partial response to chemotherapy. The four patients with adenoma were cured by complete surgical tumor resection, furthermore one of them received chemotherapy because there was not sure of his histologic benign condition. It is necessary more studies in use of chemotherapy in treatment of this tumors but in our experience CFM, VCR, Epi and Actin is a regimen that appears to be an active combination for the treatment in presurgical stage of adrenal cortical carcinoma.