Non-metastatic Ewing's sarcoma: results in 98 patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy

From June 1983 to December 1987, 98 patients with non-metastatic Ewing's sarcoma of bone were treated by a protocol of neoadjuvant chemotherapy consisting of two months of preoperative chemotherapy with vincristine, adriamycin, and cyclophosphamide followed by local treatment and one year of chemotherapy aimed at preventing recurrence using the same drugs plus dactinomycin. Local treatment consisted of surgery in 39 cases (40%), radiation in 34 (34%), and both surgery and radiation in 25 (26%). After an average follow-up of five years, 51 patients (52%) had remained continuously disease-free (CDF), 46 had developed metastasis, of which 20 with local recurrence, and one had developed a radioinduced sarcoma. The site of the tumor (61% of patients with Ewing's sarcoma of the extremities were CDF vs. 35% with tumor of the pelvis) and the kind of local treatment (61% of patients who underwent surgery with or without radiation therapy were CDF vs. 35% of patients treated with radiation therapy alone) were important prognostic factors. These results are similar to those obtained in 59 patients treated from 1979 to 1982 (average follow-up, 10 years) using the same drugs administered according to adjuvant chemotherapy procedure as well as those reported in the only other large study on this subject in the literature (the multi-institution German study CESS-81). The authors conclude that even though neoadjuvant chemotherapy makes surgery possible and easier in Ewing's sarcoma, it does not significantly increase survival when compared to traditional adjuvant treatment.