Family Med Medical News

Become a Member Today!
Register

Most Viewed Abstracts

1. AHA Guidelines on Cardiac CT for Assessing Coronary Artery Disease

2. Omega-3 fatty acids for bipolar disorder

3. Is folic acid good for everyone

4. ACS Releases Guidelines for HPV Vaccination

5. Vitamin D - A review Free full text

Your Article Summary

See Latest Articles

(Click the title below to leave the MDLinx Network and go to the Journal's Website)

Age as a prognostic factor for patients with osteosarcoma: an analysis of 438 patients
Journal of Cancer Research & Clinical Oncology, 10/01/09

Harting MT et al. – Age at diagnosis does not appear to be a significant independent prognostic variable for overall survival or disease-free survival in patients with osteosarcoma. Although our data indicate that patients in the fifth decade and older fare worse than younger patients, other variables such as tumor necrosis, tumor extension, and tumor location are likely responsible for the observed decline in overall survival and disease-free survival

Methods

438 patients
All ages
Diagnosed with osteosarcoma between 1 January 1980 and 31 December 2000
Underwent the majority of their treatment at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC)
Patient and tumor specific variables collected including patient demographics, patient history, primary tumor information, treatment strategy , metastatic disease information, long-term follow-up, and eventual outcome
Statistical analyses, including univariate and multivariate analyses performed, with overall survival and disease-free survival as primary outcome measures

Results

Median age at diagnosis was 18.1 years (range 2 months to 78.8 years)
Median follow-up 4.2 years (range 5 days to 22.8 years) for all patients and 12.3 years (range 1 month to 22.8 years) for 209 surviving patients
Survival rates at 5, 10, and 15 years were 54.1, 47.2, and 45.2%, respectively
On univariate analyses, age ≥ 40 was found to be a poor prognostic factor
Other prognostic factors included tumor size, metastasis at diagnosis, soft-tissue tumor extension, surgery type, chemotherapy group, and tumor necrosis
Age not identified a statistically significant prognostic variable on multivariate analysis