Reconstruction of Aggressive Grade 3 Calcaneal Giant Cell Tumour with Femoral Head Allograft: A Case Report

Giant Cell Tumour (GCT) of bone is a benign, locally aggressive neoplasm. GCT of the foot is rare, comprising of about 5% of cases of all GCTs. GCT of Calcaneus is exceedingly rare, comprising of 1.2% of all calcaneal tumours. Due to its uncommon occurrence at this site, diagnosis can be delayed. In this report, we present the case of a Campanacci Grade 3 GCT of calcaneus in a 43-year-old female patient with 8 months history of worsening pain and disability. We treated her successfully by resection of Os-calcis and reconstruction with a femoral head allograft and K-wire fixation, a relatively cheaper and technically lesser challenging method of reconstruction. Three years' post-surgery, she remains disease free, and her graft has healed. She continues to walk independently and remains disease free clinically and radiologically. We discuss a comparison with other reported cases where surgeons have opted for detailed intra-lesional curettage (DILC) and cementoplasty to fill the defect for a Grade 2 disease, some have even used a sural for soft tissue coverage with a maximum follow-up of two years. While in our patient we went for Calcanues resection and reconstruction with allograft because of a Grade 3 disease that poses greater risk of local recurrence with just DILC. Our patient has a three-year follow-up where she remains disease free.