Role of radiotherapy in the treatment of osteolytic damage due to bone tumors.

ABSTRACT

Metastasis to bone is a common event in the natural history of nearly all neoplasms, which often greatly affects the patient's quality of life. Bone metastases can cause pain and pathological fractures, or even a cord compression syndrome with severe neurological symptoms. The treatment of metastatic disease requires a multidisciplinary approach that addresses systemic and local disease. On a basis of available literature as well as own research current opinions on this subject has been presented in these paper.Where the treatment objective is pain relief, a single 8 Gy treatment is recommended as the standard dose-fractionation treatment of symptomatic but uncomplicated bone metastases. External beam irradiation achieves pain palliation in more than 75% of patients. Radiotherapy with doses of 40-50 Gy results in remineralization in 60-80% of patients 4-8 weeks after irradiation. The role of radiotherapy in the treatment of primary bone cancer is limited. The choice of the best local treatment of Ewing's sarcoma of bone remains a controversial issue. Surgery should always be considered in the local treatment of Ewing's sarcoma. Postoperative radiation therapy must be added when surgical margins are inadequate. Radiotherapy is used in the treatment of plasmacytoma, chordoma and chondrosarcoma.