Page 13 - Reconstructive Techniques in Musculoskeletal Tumor Surgery

Figure 2: Specimen of a forequarter amputation carried out by George McClellan in 1838 (from George McClellan, Principles and Practice of Surgery [Philadelphia: Grigg & Elliot, 1848], page 412, gure 15).
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the rst incidental reports on limb-salvaging procedures were published7-10. The advent of e ective chemotherapeutic agents in the early 1970s caused an increase of ve-year survival rates to approximately 55% to 70% for many types of primary sarcoma11-19. Concomitant sophistication of imaging and surgical techniques reduced the need for ablative procedures. Limb-salvage surgery was soon popularized and is now the treatment of choice for over 90% of patients with a primary malignant bone tumor5, 20-25 ( gure 3).
Figure 3: Graph illustrating the trends in the percentages of amputations, limb-salvage procedures, and survival for patients with primary bone sarcomas (solid line, amputations; round dot line, limb salvage procedures; square dot line, survival).
General introduction
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