Prognostic imaging defined risk factors for survival time of neuroblastoma patients in Bulgaria

Neuroblastoma is the most common solid tumor in children under 5 years of age. In this paper analysis of variance (ANOVA) is used to determine the prognostic significance of Imaging Defined Risk Factors (IDRF) for the time of relapse or death. IDRFs include a list of 20 conditions, separated across bodily compartments of tumor origin, with a slight overlap of some entities, when said entities are in transitional zones between two major compartments. They include vascular encasement by tumor, encasement of vital organs, infiltration of adjacent tissues. Each IDRF has to fulfil certain imaging criteria to be deemed as present in a given patient with neuroblastoma. The data are obtained from 42 patients – 16 boys and 26 girls, who have been admitted to the University Hospital “Saint Marina”, Varna, Bulgaria in the period 2000-2017. Time to event is calculated as the time from study entry to first event or date of last contact.