What is Bone Cancer?
Bone cancer is a type of cancer that can affect both children and adults, although it is more common in children and teens. It is categorized based on whether the cancer originated in the bone (primary) or whether it spread from another location to the bone (secondary). Secondary bone cancer, or cancer that has spread to the bone from another part of the body, is much more common than primary bone cancer. In fact, primary bone cancer is considered rare. We'll focus specifically on primary bone cancer here.
There are several types of primary bone cancer, including:
- osteosarcoma
- chondrosarcoma
- Ewing's sarcoma
- malignant fibrous histiocytoma
- fibrosarcoma
- chordoma
Symptoms of Bone
Cancer-patients may present with persistent pain, swelling, or tenderness of a bone. They may have unexplained fracture of one or more bones, sometimes without noticeable trauma.Treatment of Bone Cancer
The treatment of cancer of the bone, especially metastatic cancer, has two goals: management of the neoplasm and management of the symptoms produced by the local lesion. Prognosis is affected by a patient's age, the size of the primary tumor, grade and stage, degree of lymphatic and blood vessel invasion, the duration of symptoms and the location of the tumor on the arm, leg or trunk. There are two ways bone metastasis is treated. Systemic therapy, aimed at cancer cells that have spread throughout the body, includes chemotherapy, hormone therapy, and immunotherapy. Local therapy, aimed at killing cancer cells in one specific part of the body, includes radiation therapy and surgery.- Surgery often has to be extensive, with a wide margin of tissue around the tumor being removed. Sarcomas involving muscles require removal of the entire affected muscle group. Radiation therapy is used to prevent local recurrences of radiosensitive tumors and may be given either before or after surgery. Chemotherapy - a number of drugs have proven to be effective in treating bone and soft tissue sarcomas. The dosages required to provide a good chance for cure often produce significant side effects. Effective single agents may include doxorubicin (Adriamycin), cyclophosphamide, high-dose methotrexate (with leucovorin rescue), ifosfamide, dacarbazine, vincristine, dactinomycin (Actinomycin D), etoposide and investigational agents. Combinations of these drugs are often used. Hormone therapy is either the removal of the organs which produce hormones which can promote the growth of certain types of cancer (such as testosterone in males and estrogen in females), or drug therapy to keep the hormones from promoting cancer growth. Biphosphonates are drugs that can be used to reduce bone pain and slow down bone damage in people who have cancer that has spread to their bones.
There are also safe and effective ways to treat pain. Medications can allow people to be free of pain so that they can continue the activities that are important to them.
Click here to view some important therapy for bone and other kinds of cancer
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