Abstract
Autologous bone marrow transplantation (A-BMT) were performed on 29 patients with advanced neuroblastoma from November 1985 to January 1993. Eight of these patients relapsed after receiving A-BMT and we investigated these cases in this study. The time interval for relapse after receiving A-BMT was ranging from 6 to 19 months (average 12 months), except for one patient who relapsed 4 years later. Bone marrow relapse was mostly observed, primary site was second, bone, lymph node and brain were third. The laboratory data at the time of relapse showed an increase in one of the tumor markers. In the cases of bone marrow relapse, the evidence of anemia and thrombocytopenia was observed. In this cases of local site relapse, the radiological examination was valuable for the diagnosis. We investigated the relationship between the clinical feature at diagnosis and the relapse rate, between the treatments and the relapse rates in relapsed cases and in remission cases. There were not statistical significance.
