Pretreatment characteristics of 57 patients with alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) registered by the International Society of Pediatric Oncology (SIOP) between January 1975 and December 1983 were identified to perform a prognostic factor study. Living status and disease-free survival (DFS) time were assessed for all patients on January 1, 1988. By multi-variate analyses, lymph node involvement (P = 0.0003) and tumor invasiveness (P = 0.007) were identified as the most significant covariates correlated with survival. A model including N stage (P = 0.001) and age (P = 0.03) was selected for predicting DFS rates. Children between 5 and 10 years of age had better DFS rates than those younger than 5 years of age or those older than 10 years of age. The authors suggest a prognostic classification that could allow treatment to be adjusted according to clinical staging.