Epidemiology of musculoskeletal tumors in a reference unit

The objective of this study was to perform an epidemiological analysis of patients presented to the Musculoskeletal Tumors Committee of a reference hospital.

A retrospective analysis of patients with sarcomas treated in a reference Sarcoma Unit between 2009 and 2022 was carried out.

A total of 1978 patients were analyzed, of which 1477 (74.67%) were diagnosed as sarcomas. They were divided into 446 (30.20%) bone tumors and 1.031 (69.80%) soft tissue tumors. The most common benign bone tumor was enchondroma (27.23%), giant cell tumor (59.21%) was the most common tumor of intermediate malignancy and the malignant one was osteosarcoma (24.78%). The most frequently observed benign soft tissue tumor was lipoma (50.74%), the atypical lipomatous tumor (53.25%) was the most frequent tumor of intermediate malignancy and the malignant one was sarcoma of uncertain differentiation (38.10%).

Our study represents the first work on the epidemiology of sarcomas and other musculoskeletal tumors in our country, being very useful to adapt the resources destined for their diagnosis and treatment.