Such teams are found only in major children's hospitals, university medical centers and cancer centers. The bones may be the site to which other cancers spread, but some types originate in the skeleton. The most common bone cancer is osteogenic sarcoma. Ewing s sarcoma differs from osteosarcoma in that it affects the bone shaft, and tends to be found in bones other than the long bones of the arm and the leg, such as the ribs. Tumors of the brain and spinal cord are the most common types of solid tumors in children.
Some tumors are benign, and some children can be cured by surgery.
However, because of the difficulty in diagnosing and treating brain tumors, there has been less dramatic progress in treating them than other childhood malignancies. More boys than girls develop brain tumors. Leukemia is cancer of the bone marrow and tissues that make the blood cells. When leukemia strikes, the body makes an abundance of abnormal white cells that do not perform their proper functions. Instead, they invade the marrow and crowd out normal healthy blood cells, making the patient susceptible to anemia, infection and bruising.