Introduction: Approximately 40-50 % of sarcoma patients will develop lung metastasis, but only 10 % will develop bone metastasis. The survival benefit of surgery for solitary bone metastasis remains unclear.
Methods: From 1987 to 2019, 47 patients who underwent curative-intent treatment for localized bone or soft tissue sarcoma in the extremities or trunk wall developed solitary bone metastases as the first distant recurrence. Of them, 51 % (24/47) received curative-intent metastasectomy. We compared the clinicopathologic characteristics of the metastasectomy versus non-metastasectomy patients and evaluated the prognostic impact of solitary bone metastasectomy. The primary outcome measure was disease-specific survival (DSS) after developing solitary bone metastasis.
Results: The post-metastasis DSS was worse with larger primary tumour size (HR 1.09; 95 % CI 1.02-1.16; p = 0.01) and bone metastasis in the pelvis or spine versus other bones (HR 3.79, 95 % CI 1.46-9.87; p = 0.01), and better with curative-intent surgery for the solitary bone metastasis (HR 0.14; 95 % CI 0.06-0.34; p < 0.001). The median DSS was 43 (95 % CI, 24-69) months for the metastasectomy group vs. 13 (95 % CI, 7-19) months for the non-metastasectomy group (p < 0.001). The metastasectomy group had fewer patients with metastasis in the spine or pelvis and longer metastasis-free interval. In the multivariate analysis, curative-intent surgery for solitary bone metastasis was associated with better survival (HR 0.21; 95 % CI 0.08-0.53; p = 0.001).
Conclusions: Curative-intent surgery for solitary bone metastasis from sarcoma is associated with a better prognosis and is a reasonable treatment strategy whenever feasible.
Keywords: Complication; Disease-specific survival; Metastasectomy; Metastasis-free survival; Prognosis; en-bloc resection.
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