Background: The heterogeneous nature of hematopoietic sarcoma has restricted the diagnosis and treatment of this disease to the extent that annually, several patients lose their lives. Given the lack of comprehensive epidemiologic information on the incidence of hematopoietic sarcoma in the Iranian population, we designed the present study to evaluate the distribution pattern of this disease.
Methods: In this national population-based cancer registry study, we collected data from patients diagnosed with hematopoietic sarcoma who were registered in the Iran National Cancer Registry (INCR) between 2009 and 2013. For each patient, the variables of age, sex, province, year of diagnosis, site of involvement and morphology were collected.
Results: In 45 cases from 18 provinces of Iran, we found that the incidence rate of the disease was 0.60 (95% CI: 0.44-0.80) per million persons. Among all provinces, Ilam had the highest incidence of hematopoietic sarcoma with a rate of 2 (95% CI: 0.05- 11.14) per million persons, while Isfahan had the lowest incidence with a rate of 0.21 (95% CI: 0.01-1.16) per million persons. The incidence rate of the disease increased with age and the disease was slightly more common in men (0.63 [95% CI: 0.41-0.94] vs. 0.56 [95% CI: 0.35-0.86] per million persons). The frequency of hematopoietic sarcoma in connective and soft tissues was higher than other anatomical sites and we found that myeloid morphology was the most prevalent morphology.
Conclusion: The resulting data provided a valuable perspective on the distribution pattern of hematopoietic sarcoma in Iran; however, further studies are required to confirm these results.
Keywords: Hematopoietic System; Incidence; Iran; Sarcoma.
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