Today's News

Saturday, March 18, 2000

Pelvic chondrosarcomas treatment aids survival

Tumor grade is highly correlated with overall and disease free survival, said Maya E. Pring, MD, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.

Sixty-four patients with pel-vic chondrosarcoma treated at a single institution between the years of 1975 and 1996 were retrospectively reviewed. The study was limited to patients with localized disease and no previous treatment for chondrosarcoma. There were 41 males and 23 females, with a mean age of 47 (range, 15-88) years. Patients were followed for a minimum of three years or until death, with no patients lost to follow-up. Mean follow-up was 10 (range, 0.3-24) years. Clinical and radiologic data for each patient was reviewed, and functional status was determined using the MSTS functional evaluation.

Thirty-three patients presented with grade 1 pelvic chondrosarcoma; 23 patients, with grade 2 disease; one patient, grade 3; and seven, grade 4. Thirteen patients required external hemipelvectomy to achieve local tumor control and 51 patients had limb salvage procedures. Twelve patients (19 percent) had local recurrence and eleven (16 percent) had distant metastases.

At final follow-up, 44 pa-tients (69 percent) were alive without evidence of disease, 13 (20 percent) died of disease, six (9 percent) died of unrelated causes and one was alive with disease.

Overall survival at 10 years was 97 percent for patients with grade 1 disease, 75 per-cent for patients with grade 2 and 25 percent for patients with high grade (3 or 4) tumors. Less than wide surgical margins correlated with local recurrence (p=0.044). High grade tumors correlated with poor overall survival (p>0.001). All patients having limb salvage procedures were ambulatory at final follow-up with a mean MSTS functional score of 77 percent.

Also participating in the study from Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. are Kristy L. Weber, MD; and Franklin H. Sim, MD.