Abstract
Introduction: Osteogenic Sarcoma is one of the most common malignant bone tumors in the younger population. The advances in chemotherapy in conjunction with surgery has improved the survival rates from less than 20% in 1970s to more than 70% in 1990s. Advanced imaging, better histopathological techniques, availability of bone banks and newer chemotherapeutic agents have made limb salvage surgery a viable option even in advanced stages of the disease. We reviewed the outcome and analysed the complications of patients with Osteogenic Sarcoma at our institution.
Materials and methods: The objective of our study was to evaluate our experience with the treatment of osteogenic sarcoma and to do a survival analysis. It was a retrospective study consisting of 20 patients who were treated between 1990–1998. Mean age was 17 years with equal distribution of males and females. Of all the patients, 18 had stage II b disease and 2 patients had stage III disease. The quetionnaire focused on the initial mode of presentation of the patients, their stage of disease, the type of neo-adjuvent chemotherapy used and the type of surgery they underwent
Results: Majority of the patients presented at least six months after the onset of symptoms with pain and swelling being the most common modes of presentation. Majority of our patients had open biopsies done outside our hospital and received non-uniform neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. Distal femur was involved in 60% of the cases followed by proximal and distal tibia. Limb salvage surgery was performed in 90% of the cases, while the rest had primary amputation due to the extent of the disease. Autoclaved bone, allografts, free fibular grafts and custom made prostheses were used to reconstruct the intercalary defects left by the resection of the tumor. Polyuria was our main early post operative complication followed by wound infection. Only one patient had a local recurrence and 7/20 had distant metastasis in our follow-up (mean 2.5 years). Mortality rate was 25% in our study.
Conclusion: Limb salvage surgery was performed quite successfully with only one local recurrence in all of our patients with stage II b disease. Most of our patients who developed late distant metastasis had a non-uniform and uncontrolled chemotherapy protocol which could have adversely affected our final outcome.
The abstracts were prepared by Professor Jegan Krishnan. Correspondence should be addressed to him at the Flinders Medical Centre, Bedford Park 5047, Australia.
