Background
Reconstruction after internal hemipelvectomy resection likely provides better function than hindquarter amputation. However, many reconstruction methods have been used, complications with ...these approaches are common, and function often is poor; because of these issues, it seems important to investigate alternative implants and surgical techniques.
Questions/purposes
The purposes of this study were (1) to identify the frequency of surgical site complications and infection associated with the use of the Ice-Cream Cone prosthesis for reconstruction after hemipelvectomy for oncological indications; (2) to evaluate the Musculoskeletal Tumor Society (MSTS) outcomes scores in a small group of patients treated with this implant in the short term; and (3) to quantify the surgical margins and frequency of local recurrence in the short term in this group of patients.
Methods
Between 2008 and 2013, one center performed a total of 27 internal hemipelvectomies for oncological indications. Of those, 23 (85%) were treated with reconstruction. Our general indications for reconstruction were patients whose pelvic stability was affected by the resection and whose general condition was sufficiently strong to tolerate the reconstructive procedure. Of those patients undergoing reconstruction, 14 (61%) were treated with an Ice-Cream Cone-style implant (Coned
®
; Stanmore Worldwide Ltd, Elstree, UK; and Socincer
®
custom-made implant for the pelvis, Gijón, Spain), whereas nine others were treated with other implants or allografts. The indications during this time for using the Ice-Cream Cone implant were pelvic tumors affecting the periacetabular area without iliac wing involvement. Of those 14, 10 were available for followup at a minimum of 2 years (median, 3 years; range, 2–5 years) unless a study endpoint (wound complication, infection, or local recurrence) was observed earlier. Study endpoints were ascertained by chart review performed by one of the authors.
Results
Local wound complication occurred in five of the 10 of the patients and two developed deep infection. None of them had to be removed. Median MSTS score was 19 out of 30 when 0 is the worst possible result and 30 a perfect function and emotional status. Five of seven primary tumors had wide margin surgery and three of seven developed local recurrences by the end of the followup.
Conclusions
Pelvic reconstruction with the Ice-Cream Cone prosthesis yielded fair functional results at short-term followup. Longer term surveillance is called for to see whether this implant will represent an improvement over available reconstructive alternatives such as allograft, custom-made implants, and saddle prostheses. We are cautiously optimistic and continue to use this implant when we need to reconstruct the periacetabular area in patients without Enneking Zone 1 involvement.
Level of Evidence
Level IV, therapeutic study.
Background
A biopsy is the final step in the diagnosis of sarcomas. Complete resection of the biopsy tract traditionally has been recommended in musculoskeletal oncology guidelines, as that tract is ...considered potentially seeded with tumor cells. However, to our knowledge, the frequency and implications of contamination of the biopsy tract—specifically with respect to the likelihood of local recurrence—and the factors that affect cell seeding are not well described.
Questions/purposes
We asked: (1) How often are biopsy tracts contaminated with pathologically detectable tumor cells at the time of tumor resection? (2) What factors, in particular biopsy type (open versus percutaneous), are associated with tumoral seeding? (3) Is biopsy tract contamination associated with local recurrence?
Methods
This is a retrospective study of a database with patient data collected from a single center between 2000 and 2013. We treated 221 patients with sarcomas. A total of 27 patients (12%) were excluded and 14 (6%) were lost to followup. One hundred eighty patients finally were included in the analysis who either had biopsies at our center (112) or biopsies at outside institutions (68). Of those performed at our center, 15 (13%) were open and 97 (87%) were percutaneous; of those at outside centers, those numbers were 47 (69%) and 21 (31%) respectively. Median followup was 40 months (range, 24–152 months). During the study period, we generally performed percutaneous biopsies as a standard practice for the diagnosis of bone and soft tissue sarcomas and open biopsies were done when the percutaneous procedure failed to provide a histologic characterization. The mean age of the population was 48 years (range, 7–87 years); 60% were male; 42% had bone sarcomas. Nineteen patients had preoperative radiotherapy and 56 had postoperative radiotherapy. Fifty-seven patients received neoadjuvant chemotherapy and 73 had adjuvant chemotherapy. We determined what proportion of biopsy tracts were contaminated by pathologic analysis of the biopsy tract specimen; during the period in question, our routine practice was to excise the biopsy tract whenever possible at the time of the definitive resection. Using the logistic regression test and Mantel-Haenszel test, we compared open with percutaneous biopsies in terms of the proportion of those that were contaminated at our site and for outside referral biopsies separately, because we do not assume the level of expertise was the same (our site is a referral tumor center). We compared the local recurrence-free survival between patients with and without contamination and between open and percutaneous biopsies using the Kaplan Meier test, again separating those performed at our site from those referred for purposes of this analysis.
Results
Twenty-one of 180 biopsy tracts were contaminated (12%). Twenty of 62 (32%) of the open biopsies and one of 118 (0.8%) of the percutaneous core needle biopsies had cell seeding (odds ratio OR, 56; 95% CI, 7–428; p < 0.001. One of 97 (1%) percutaneous biopsies performed in our center, and none of the 21 (0%) percutaneous biopsies performed in other centers had contaminated biopsy tracts (p = 0.047). Two of 15 (13%) open biopsies performed at our center and 18 of 41(38%) open biopsies performed at other centers had contaminated biopsy tracts (OR, 4; 95% CI, 1–7; p = 0.001). Four of 74 (5%) bone sarcomas and 18 of 106 (17%) soft tissue sarcomas had biopsy tract contamination (OR, 3; 95% CI, 1–10; p = 0.023). The local recurrence-free survival was longer for patients without contaminated tracts (mean, 107 months; 95% CI, 74–141 months) than for those with biopsy tract seeding (mean, 11 months; 95% CI, 1–20 months; p < 0.001).
Conclusions
Open biopsies were associated with an increased risk of tumoral seeding of the biopsy site, and tumoral seeding was associated with an increased risk of local recurrence. However, it is possible that other factors, such as increased complexity of the tumor or a difficult location, influenced the decision to obtain an open biopsy. Even so, based on these results, we believe that higher risk of local recurrence may be caused by an incomplete biopsy tract resection. In our opinion, the percutaneous biopsy with neoadjuvant or adjuvant therapy is the preferred method of biopsy at our center.
Level of Evidence
Level III, therapeutic study.
Cutaneous fibrous histiocytoma (FH) is considered a benign dermal tumor. The cellular variant is rare and poorly documented. Besides presenting a high risk of local recurrence, it has a low but ...serious metastatic potential. We present a case of metastatic cellular FH and also review the literature on this tumor, given its unusual metastatic development. A 47‐year‐old male patient presented with a lesion in the anterior surface of the right thigh, which has been present since adolescence but had grown during last year. Anatomopathological evaluation revealed a cellular FH, and the lesion was completely removed. Six months later, tumor recurrence with multiple compartment muscle involvement and pulmonary metastasis were detected. Both lesions were completely resected and after 3 years of follow‐up, the patient is asymptomatic and free of the disease. We conclude that FH should be carefully sampled to detect variants with high local recurrence rates or with some metastatic risk such as the cellular one. We recommend wide surgical resection and a close follow‐up including chest x‐rays or thorax computed tomography (CT) in all cellular FH cases with local recurrence.
Introduction
Intranodal palisaded myofibroblastoma (IPM) is an exceedingly rare benign mesenchymal tumor of the lymph nodes. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings are unspecific, which may ...present diagnostic challenges to fine‐needle aspiration cytology (FNAC). The histological and immunohistochemical features of IPM are unique.
Case Report
A previously healthy 40‐year‐old male patient presented a slow‐growing solitary left inguinal mass. FNAC revealed clustered cells within a metachromatic stroma, single spindle cells without atypia, hemosiderin pigment, and siderophages. An MRI showed a central hyperintense septum in fat‐suppressed, T2‐weighted sequences. The excised lymph node contained central haphazard fascicles of spindle cells with focal nuclear palisading, hemosiderin pigment, extravasated erythrocytes, and hemorrhagic areas. Vimentin and smooth muscle actin were diffusely positive. Amianthoid collagen fibers were not clearly observed.
Conclusion
IPM is an extremely rare mesenchymal benign intranodal tumor that should be included in the differential diagnosis of spindle cell lesions in the inguinal region.
Tumor surgeons use a variety of endoprosthetic designs for reconstruction after bone tumor resection. However, functional results and implant survival have not been evaluated for each design. Because ...the outcomes and failure modes (for example, implant breakage, loosening) may differ between prosthetic design types, it is important to examine the problems associated with different designs. Because of experiences in our practice, we became concerned about a surprisingly high frequency of device breakage with one particular design, and we wished to report on that experience. QUESTION/PURPOSES: (1) In a small series of patients, what proportion of a particular design (Zimmer® Segmental Zimmer Inc, Warsaw, IN, USA) of rotating-hinge endoprosthesis experienced implant breakage at short-term follow-up? (2) What patient symptoms were associated with this finding? (3) What is the function as assessed by Musculoskeletal Tumor Society (MSTS) score with the use of this implant before and after revision?
We treated 87 patients in our tertiary center from 1987 to 2014 who had sarcomas around the knee with wide resection and reconstruction with tumoral endoprosthesis; five patients were lost to follow-up. In all, 33 of the remanining 82 prostheses, treated from 1987 to 2006, were reconstructed with fixed-hinge designs. From 2006 to 2014, 49 patients were reconstructed with a knee endoprosthesis, and 48 of them had a rotating-hinge prosthesis. In our center, we mostly used four designs: 16 of 49 patients were reconstructed with GMRS (Stryker Howmedica, Kalamazoo, MI, USA), seven received the LPS™ (DePuy Synthes, Warsaw, IN, USA), 20 of 49 had the METS (Stanmore, Hertfordshire, UK), and six of 49 received the Zimmer Segmental. The focus of this report is on the six patients with the Segmental. We retrospectively gathered clinical and radiologic data from these six patients' records and we assessed radiographic images. We evaluated function with the MSTS score of the 49 patients. The median follow-up duration of the Segmental prosthesis reconstruction was 65 months (range 24 to 85).
Three of the six patients had posterior instability and recurrent joint effusion on physical examination. Three patients who did not have hyperextension presented with restricted knee ROM. Six revision procedures were performed in three patients. The median MSTS score at 6 months for the Segmental® prosthesis was 15 of 30 (range 6 to 24). The score in the three patients who had posterior instability was 9 of 30 (range 6 to 15) and it improved to median 25 of 30 (range 19 to 30) 6 months after revision. The patients with the Segmental® prosthesis who did not undergo revision had a median MSTS score of 20 (range 16 to 24).
The Zimmer Segmental rotating-hinge tumoral prosthesis underwent revision for implant breakage at short term in three of six patients after tumor resection and reconstruction of the knee. Bumper breakage was associated with posterior instability that was related to wear of the bushing blocking system. We are unaware of reports of these issues by other observers or in other prosthetic designs, but we feel larger registries should be created to see if this failure mechanism has been observed by others. If so, this design needs to be improved or the blocking system should be avoided.Level of Evidence Level IV, therapeutic study.
Malignant bone tumors are aggressive tumors, with a high tendency to metastasize, that are observed most frequently in adolescents during rapid growth spurts. Pediatric patients with malignant bone ...sarcomas, Ewing sarcoma and osteosarcoma, who present with progressive disease have dire survival rates despite aggressive therapy. These therapies can have long-term effects on bone growth, such as decreased bone mineral density and reduced longitudinal growth. New therapeutic approaches are therefore urgently needed for targeting pediatric malignant bone tumors. Harnessing the power of the immune system against cancer has improved the survival rates dramatically in certain cancer types. Natural killer (NK) cells are a heterogeneous group of innate effector cells that possess numerous antitumor effects, such as cytolysis and cytokine production. Pediatric sarcoma cells have been shown to be especially susceptible to NK-cell-mediated killing. NK-cell adoptive therapy confers numerous advantages over T-cell adoptive therapy, including a good safety profile and a lack of major histocompatibility complex restriction. NK-cell immunotherapy has the potential to be a new therapy for pediatric malignant bone tumors. In this manuscript, we review the general characteristics of osteosarcoma and Ewing sarcoma, discuss the long-term effects of sarcoma treatment on bones, and the barriers to effective immunotherapy in bone sarcomas. We then present the laboratory and clinical studies on NK-cell immunotherapy for pediatric malignant bone tumors. We discuss the various donor sources and NK-cell types, the engineering of NK cells and combinatorial treatment approaches that are being studied to overcome the current challenges in adoptive NK-cell therapy, while suggesting approaches for future studies on NK-cell immunotherapy in pediatric bone tumors.
Hip joint reconstruction following intra-articular resection of the femoral head in children is a highly demanding challenge. We aimed to describe the outcomes of hip reconstruction in paediatric ...patients with a free fibular epiphyso-diaphyseal flap based on both anterior tibial and peroneal vessels within a radius allograft.
Four patients underwent hip reconstruction following this technique between 2013 and 2020 at La Paz University Hospital (Madrid, Spain). The postoperative follow-up period ranged between 12 months and seven years. Two of the patients were diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma and two with osteosarcoma. The median age at the time of surgery was eight years (six to nine).
Three patients remained to be disease-free at the time of this study, and one died shortly after surgery, so he was excluded from the reconstruction analysis of results. No postoperative complications requiring reintervention were recorded. Imaging studies (X-ray and MRI) showed three-dimensional growth of the flap and integration of the allograft. Mean leg length discrepancy was 1.3 cm (0 to 2.3). At the last follow-up visit, all patients were able to ambulate.
For children following oncological resection of the femoral head, reconstruction with a vascularized epiphyso-diaphyseal fibula flap combined with radius allograft is a safe option. This procedure provides encouraging functional results and avoids the complications of previously published techniques or implants.
Problem
Natural killer (NK, CD3−
CD56+/CD16+) and NKT‐like cells (CD3+
CD56+/CD16+) activity is considered among the key factors for reproductive success. In the absence of immunological screening, ...beneficial effects of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) in preventing recurrent reproductive failure (RRF) have not been reported. Here, we analyse the IVIG influence on pregnancy success in women with RRF and circulating NK or/and NKT‐like cells expansion.
Method of study
One hundred fifty‐seven women with previous recurrent miscarriage and/or recurrent implantation failure after in vitro fertilization were consecutively studied. Sixty‐four patients with CD56+ cell expansion, no apparent underlying disease and who maintained their desire to conceive were selected. Forty of them received IVIG during pregnancy.
Results
Overall, the clinical pregnancy rate for the women under IVIG therapy was 92.5% and the live birth rate was 82.5%. Significantly lower pregnancy and live birth rates (25% and 12.5%, respectively) were observed for the patients with recurrent pregnancy loss and NK/NKT‐like cells expansion without IVIG. After three cycles of IVIG, NK cell percentages decreased significantly and these values persisted throughout gestation.
Conclusion
Intravenous immunoglobulin therapy for women with RRF and NK or NKT‐like cell expansion was a safe and beneficial therapeutic strategy that associated with high clinical pregnancy and live birth rates.
Background
Survival in patients who have Ewing sarcoma is correlated with postchemotherapy response (tumor necrosis). This treatment response has been categorized as the response rate, similar to ...what has been used in osteosarcoma. There is controversy regarding whether this is appropriate or whether it should be a dichotomy of complete versus incomplete response, given how important a complete response is for in overall survival of patients with Ewing sarcoma. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact that the amount of chemotherapy‐induced necrosis has on (1) overall survival, (2) local recurrence‐free survival, (3) metastasis‐free survival, and (4) event‐free survival in patients with Ewing sarcoma.
Methods
In total, 427 patients who had Ewing sarcoma or tumors in the Ewing sarcoma family and received treatment with preoperative chemotherapy and surgery at 10 international institutions were included. Multivariate Cox proportional‐hazards analyses were used to assess the associations between tumor necrosis and all four outcomes while controlling for clinical factors identified in bivariate analysis, including age, tumor volume, location, surgical margins, metastatic disease at presentation, and preoperative radiotherapy.
Results
Patients who had a complete (100%) tumor response to chemotherapy had increased overall survival (hazard ratio HR, 0.26; 95% CI, 0.14–0.48; p < .01), recurrence‐free survival (HR, 0.40; 95% CI, 0.20–0.82; p = .01), metastasis‐free survival (HR, 0.27; 95% CI, 0.15–0.46; p ≤ .01), and event‐free survival (HR, 0.26; 95% CI, 0.16–0.41; p ≤ .01) compared with patients who had a partial (0%–99%) response.
Conclusions
Complete tumor necrosis should be the index parameter to grade response to treatment as satisfactory in patients with Ewing sarcoma. Any viable tumor in these patients after neoadjuvant treatment should be of oncologic concern. These findings can affect the design of new clinical trials and the risk‐stratified application of conventional or novel treatments.
Complete tumor necrosis should be the index parameter to grade response to treatment as satisfactory in patients with Ewing sarcoma. Any viable tumor in these patients after neoadjuvant treatment should be of oncologic concern, and these findings can affect the design of new clinical trials and the risk‐stratified application of conventional or novel treatments.
Background
Pyrazoles have attracted particular attention due to the diverse biological activities associated with this heterocyclic system, and some have been shown to be cytotoxic to several human ...cell lines. Several drugs currently on the market have this heterocycle as the key structural motif, and some have been approved for the treatment of different types of cancer.
Results
4,4ʹ-(Arylmethylene)bis(1
H
-pyrazol-5-ols) derivatives
3a
–
q
were synthetized by a three components reaction of 3-methyl-1-phenyl-5-pyrazolone (
1
) with various benzaldehydes
2
catalyzed by sodium acetate at room temperature. The structures of all synthesized compounds were characterized by physicochemical properties and spectral means (IR and NMR) and were evaluated for their radical scavenging activity by DPPH assay and tested in vitro on colorectal RKO carcinoma cells in order to determine their cytotoxic properties. All 4,4ʹ-(arylmethylene)bis(1
H
-pyrazol-5-ols) derivatives
3a
–
q
were synthetized in high to excellent yield, and pure products were isolated by simple filtration. All compounds have good radical scavenging activity, and half of them are more active than ascorbic acid used as standard.
Conclusion
Several derivatives proved to be cytotoxic in the RKO cell line. In particular, compound
3i
proved to be a very potent scavenger with an IC
50
of 6.2 ± 0.6 µM and exhibited an IC
50
of 9.9 ± 1.1 μM against RKO cell. Autophagy proteins were activated as a survival mechanism, whereas the predominant pathway of death was p53-mediated apoptosis.