Aggressive multimodal treatment of pleuropulmonary blastoma

Pleuropulmonary blastoma is a rare intrathoracic neoplasm almost solely con fined to childhood. Survival is poor. The authors report 2 children with ex tensive intrathoracic disease who are long term survivors after multimodal therapy. Both children received multiagent neoadjuvant chemotherapy, follow ed by surgical resection to remove all gross tumor. Postoperative chemother apy was given to both children; radiotherapy was also given in the second c ase because of a question of positive tumor margins. Experience supports th e use of multimodal therapy, including an aggressive surgical approach in t he potentially curative treatment of this tumor. (C) 2001 by The Society of Thoracic Surgeons.