Eur J Pediatr (2009) 168:1081–1090 Table 2 (continued) Multicentre retrospective patient series Single centre retrospective patient series Patients and methods Patients (0–12 years) Patients with NB newly with NB visiting diagnosed or seen the centre within in survey region time period and born in survey (n=nm) region (n=97) 32 (% unclear) nm – Results 0 (0) – – Study 0 (0) 0 (0) nm 97 (100) 35 (% unclear) Stage 1, 8%; 2, 13%; 3, 18%; 4, nm 50%; 4s, 11% Birth certificates of age matched Age- and sex-matched controls randomly selected designated controls from all live births from general practitioner in the same state lists (n=555) (n=388) Review of radiographs and re-examination of patients Review of birth certificates and supplemental information forms Parental interview, verification of information in obstetric records and general practitioners’ records Review of records from birth defects registry after linkage with cancer registry Nakissa et al. [23] Neglia et al. [25] Mann et al. [16] Mili et al. [19] USA, 1965–1980 USA, 1969–nm England, time period nm USA, 1983–1988 Foulkes et al. [9] Canada, 1977–1993 1 (2.9) 0 (0) nm 1 (2.9) – – Multicentre retrospective patient series Multicentre (cancer registry) retrospective cohort study Single centre retrospective cohort study Patients newly diagnosed with NB (n=nm) Incident cases of NB registered in cancer registry and born in Iowa (n=34) 34 (100) nm – 1085 Patients newly diagnosed with NB (n=141) 141 (100) Stage 1, 23.4%; 2, 9.2%; 3, 24.1%; 4, 31.9%; 4s, 11.3% Live births in British Columbia Health Surveillance Registry 1979–1988 (n=419,646) Patients: review of charts Controls: data in registry 6 (4.3) Expected in patient cohort: 1.75 P<0.01 Narod et al. [24] Friedman et al. [10] Nishi et al. [26] George et al. [11] eventually excluded because echocardiography of sufficient quality could not be obtained due to unrest during the performance of the echocardiogram. Altogether, accurate echocardiography was available in 119 of the 133 eligible patients (89.5%), of which 102 were obtained prospectively and 17 retrospectively. Characteristics of these 119 patients are given in Table 1. Two of 119 patients with echocardiography had CHD (1.7%, 95% CI 0.20–5.94). One patient was a 19-year-old male with a ventricular septal defect (VSD) at birth, which had spontaneously closed when he was 1 year old. In the other patient, a 19-year-old woman, echocardiography revealed a persistent left superior vena cava. Both patients were asymptomatic. No CHD was detected in any of the remaining 117 patients. In one patient, a 3-year-old boy with psychomotor retardation, hypertrophic cardiomyopa- thy was present, which had already been diagnosed before the start of this study and pre-existed before treatment for the neuroblastoma. The cause of the cardiomyopathy is unknown. In the control group of ALL patients, seven of 192 (3.6%) patients were reported to have CHD [11]. The proportion of CHD in our cohort of surviving neuroblasto-