What’s New in Musculoskeletal Tumor Surgery 2019

Every month, JBJS publishes a review of the most pertinent and impactful studies published in the orthopaedic literature during the previous year in 13 subspecialties. Click here for a collection of OrthoBuzz summaries of these “What’s New” articles. This month, author Peter S. Rose, MD selected the most clinically compelling findings from the 40 studies summarized in the December 18, 2019 “What’s New in Musculoskeletal Tumor Surgery.”

Staging Primary Bone Tumors
–The American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) issued new staging criteria for primary bone tumors,¹ largely in response to clinician reports that pelvic and spinal bone tumors have adverse clinical outcomes compared with extremity tumors. In the AJCC staging system, different criteria are applied to extremity, pelvic (inclusive of the sacrum), and mobile spinal tumors—an important step toward gathering data to better define the prognosis of these tumors.

Bone Metastases
–The skeletal system is the third most common site of metastatic disease, and the most common location of symptomatic skeletal metastases is about the hip. In a risk-adjusted analysis of US Veterans Administration data, Philipp et al. showed that patients with femoral metastases treated prophylactically have a lower risk of death (hazard ratio, 0.75) than similar patients treated after pathological fracture.²

Post-Resection Reconstruction
–Aponte-Tinao et al. investigated the ≥10-year survival of bulk allografts for the femur and tibia, demonstrating 60% graft survival in 166 patients.³ However, proximal tibial osteoarticular grafts fared poorly.

Soft-Tissue Sarcomas
–An analysis of the impact of obesity on soft-tissue sarcoma presentation and management⁴ arrived at 3 conclusions. Relative to non-obese patients,

1. Obese patients presented with larger tumors (presumably because of difficulty detecting them).
2. Obese patients required more complex wound closures.
3. Obese patients experienced more complications.

–A retrospective analysis of the value of radiotherapy and chemotherapy in treating different subtypes of soft-tissue sarcomas⁵ revealed that myxoid liposarcomas, vascular sarcomas, and myxofibrosarcomas had the greatest benefit from radiation in terms of local control rates, although there was no difference in overall survival. Chemotherapy resulted in a 5% survival benefit.

References

1. Kniesl JS, Rosenberg AE, Anderson PM, Antonescu C, Bruland O, Cooper K, Horvai A, Holt G, O’Sullivan B, Patel S, Rose P. Bone. In: Amin M.B., Edge S.B., Greene F.L., Byrd D.R., Brookland R.K., Washington M.K., Gershenwald J.E., Compton C.C., Hess K.R., Sullivan D.C., Jessup J.M., Brierley J.D., Gaspar L.E., Schilsky R.L., Balch C.M.,Winchester D.P., Asare E.A., Madera M., Gress D.M., Vega L.M., editors. AJCC cancer staging manual. 8th ed. Springer; 2018. p 471-86.
2. Philipp T, Mikula J, Doung Y-C, Gundle K. Is there an association between prophylactic femur stabilization and survival in patients with metastatic bone disease? Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2019 May 17. [Epub ahead of print.]
3. Aponte-Tinao L, Ayerza M, Albergo J, Farfalli GL. Do massive allograft reconstructions for tumors of the femur and tibia survive 10 or more years after implantation? Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2019 May 17. [Epub ahead of print.]
4. Montgomery C, Harris J, Siegel E, Suva L, Wilson M, Morell S, Nicholas R. Obesity is associated with larger soft-tissue sarcomas, more surgical complications, and more complex wound closures (obesity leads to larger soft-tissue sarcomas). J Surg Oncol. 2018 Jul;118(1):184-91. Epub 2018 Jun 7.
5. Callegaro D, Miceli R, Bonvalot S, Ferguson P, Strauss DC, Levy A, Griffin A, Hayes AJ, Stacchiotti S, Le P`echoux C, Smith MJ, Fiore M, Dei Tos AP, Smith HG, Catton C, Casali PG, Wunder JS, Gronchi A. Impact of perioperative chemotherapy and radiotherapy in patients with primary extremity soft tissue sarcoma: retrospective analysis across major histological subtypes and major reference centres. Eur J Cancer. 2018 Dec;105:19-27. Epub 2018 Oct 29.