Chondrosarcoma of the pelvis. A review of sixty-four cases

Treatment of pelvic chondrosarcoma is a difficult problem for the musculoskeletal oncologist. Poor rates of survival and high rates of local recurrence after surgical treatment have been reported in previous studies. The present study was designed to review the long-term oncologic and functional outcomes of surgical management in a large series of patients with pelvic chondrosarcoma who were treated at a single institution.

The cases of sixty-four patients with localized pelvic chondrosarcoma that had been surgically treated between 1975 and 1996 were reviewed retrospectively. The study was limited to patients who had received no previous treatment for chondrosarcoma. There were forty-one male and twenty-three female patients who had a mean age of forty-seven years (range, fifteen to eighty-eight years). The patients were followed for a minimum of three years or until death. The median duration of follow-up of the living patients was 140 months (range, thirty-nine to 295 months).

Thirty-three of the sixty-four patients were first seen with grade-1 chondrosarcoma; twenty-three, with grade-2; one, with grade-3; and seven, with grade-4 (dedifferentiated chondrosarcoma). Thirteen patients had a hemipelvectomy to achieve local tumor control, whereas fifty-one patients underwent a limb-salvage procedure. Twelve patients (19%) had local recurrence, and eleven (17%) had distant metastases. At the time of the final follow-up, forty-four patients (69%) were alive without evidence of disease, thirteen (20%) had died of the disease, six (9%) had died of unrelated causes, and one (2%) was alive with disease. Less than a wide surgical margin correlated with local recurrence (p = 0.014). High-grade tumors correlated with poor overall survival (p < 0.001). All patients who had a limb-salvage procedure were able to walk at the time of the final follow-up, and they had a mean functional score of 77%, according to the system of the Musculoskeletal Tumor Society.

Aggressive surgical resection of pelvic chondrosarcoma results in long-term survival of the majority of patients. There is a high correlation between tumor grade and overall or disease-free survival.