The management of rhabdomyosarcoma in children and young adults

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Abstract
Survival rates among children with rhabdomyosarcoma have increased from approximately 20% to 70% during the past 15 years, and this improvement appears to be progressive. The major factor in this remarkable development has been the increasing effectiveness of multiple‐agent, long‐range chemotherapy regimens in (a) destroying micrometastasis, (b) controlling residual tumor at the sites of local excision, and (c) eliminating established metastatic tumor foci. Improved radiation therapy techniques and operative surgical procedures have been coordinated with this chemotherapeutic approach, largely in an adaptive fashion, resulting in multimodality therapy programs of increasing effectiveness. During the past decade, additional histologic variants of tumor have been identified, new techniques for accurately defining the extent of disease have been developed, and forms of vigorous supportive therapy have been employed for the first time. All of these have contributed to improvement in the results of therapy.