Purpose: We report cancerological and functional outcome in 41 patients who underwent interilioabdominal disarticulation for malignant tumours.

Material and methods: This retrospective series included 27 men and 14 women, mean age 49 years, most of whom underwent surgery for chondrosarcoma. In ten patients, the disarticulation followed a resection-reconstruction procedure. In five patients, it followed curettage or contaminated margin resection. For seven patients it was performed after radiotherapy alone. None of the patients had metastatic dissemination prior to surgery. The resection margins were in healthy tissue in 24 cases and contaminated in 17. Mean follow-up was 62 months.

Results: Twenty-eight patients died from their disease and one died from pulmonary embolism. At last follow-up, among the 13 living patients, five had local or general relapse. For the 17 patients who had contaminated resection margins, ten developed a recurrent tumour compared with five recurrent tumours among the 25 patients with resection margins in healthy tissue. Mean five-and ten-year survival rates were 30% and 25% respectively. Initial treatment, tumour size and tumour histology did not have any significant effect on prognosis. The only factor with a significant effect on survival was the quality of the resection margins. All patients were able to walk with two crutches.

Discussion: Interilioabdominal disarticulation is a very mutilating procedure. Since the development of conservative surgery of the pelvis, indications for interilioabdominal disarticulation are generally limited to very voluminous endopelvic tumours with vessel and nerve invasion. For local recurrence after surgical resection of the pelvis or proximal femur, especially in patients with infection or radiated tissue, interilioabdominal disarticulation may be the only solution providing satisfactory cancerological resection. Careful exploration of the locoregional and general extension is necessary before proposing this mutilating procedure, with its inherent psychological and functional impact, in order to properly select patients free of metastasis who could benefit from the cancerological resection provided by inter-ilioabdominal disarticulation.