Every year in Kosovo, around 60 children develop malignant diseases

Every year in Kosovo, about 60 children with malignant diseases

Every year, around 55 to 60 new cases of malignant diseases are registered in children, announced the director of the Pediatrics Clinic at UCCK, Violeta Grajçevci-Uka.

In an interview with Ekonomia Online, she said that the capacities they possess are sufficient to handle these cases.

“The number of new cases reported to us during a year with malignant diseases in pediatric age ranges somewhere between 55 or up to 60 new cases per year. The largest number is acute leukemia, especially acute lymphoblastic leukemia, we have lymphomas, brain tumors, solid tumors, bone tumors, etc. They are a wide pathology of malignant diseases that appear in the Pediatric Clinic.
“The capacities we possess are sufficient for the treatment of these cases. The hematology department has 19 beds. In addition to treating malignant cases, we also have hematological cases, that is, blood diseases, such as anemia, thrombocytopathy, hemophilia, but at the same time, in addition to these diseases, we also treat oncological cases and the capacities are sufficient, both in infrastructure and in consumables, and in most cases we have very good results,” she said.

Grajçevci-Uka specifies that the ages of the patients vary, from 28 days to 18 years of age.

“This disease knows no age, so it attacks all pediatric ages. However, the most common age is preschool age and fortunately they have a better prognosis, compared to ages under two years and over 12 years, when the prognosis can be more severe due to age, but even in those cases we have very good results in the treatment of malignant diseases,” she added.

Grajçevci-Uka points out the importance of early diagnosis and urges parents to be careful in case of certain signs.

“It is good to be diagnosed as early as possible, because the earlier the diagnosis, the more complete the recovery. I will suggest to parents that any change they see in their children, e.g. any change in the skin in the form of red dots, the growth of lymph glands, whether in the neck or other regions, which does not go away with medication or if there is anemia, which is not being treated properly based on the therapy the patient is taking, if there is any fatigue, lethargy. If they have these signs of leukemia, we should immediately suspect that we are dealing with a malignant blood disease, in this case which is leukemia, but also other diseases that if we see any growth in the body, freely present themselves to us and we perform all the tests only in order to diagnose early,” said for EO, ​​the director of the Pediatrics Clinic at UCCK, Violeta Grajçevci-Uka. /EO/