Bone and Soft Tissue Oncology

Patient and Family Education

Ewing's Family of Tumors

Risk Factors

Only about 5 percent of all childhood bone tumors are EFTs. About 150 children and adolescents are diagnosed with a Ewing's tumor in the United Sates each year.

Certain risk factors may increase a person's chance of developing EFTs. These include:

Race: For unknown reasons, Ewing's occurs most frequently in the white population and is rare among African Americans and Asian Americans.
Sex: Ewing's is slightly more common in boys than girls.
Age: About 27 percent of all Ewing's cases are diagnosed in children younger than 10 years old. The majority of cases -- 64 percent -- occur in children between the ages of 10 and 20. Ewing's is rare among adults, and is almost never seen in anyone over the age of 30.

This page was last updated on: September 21, 2009.