Management of periacetabular metastatic bone disease (MBD) is challenging, specifically if associated with bone loss or fracture. The aim of this study was to evaluate the complications and outcomes after undergoing peri-acetabular reconstruction using an \'ice-cream cone\' pedestal cup endoprostheses for the most severe cases of (impending) pathological acetabular fractures. Fifty cases with severe periacetabular disease were identified. Acetabular defects were classified using the Metastatic Acetabular Classification (MAC). Pre- and post-operative mobility was assessed using the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) Performance Status. Pain levels were assessed using a verbal rating scale. Surgical complications and patient survival were analysed; the Prognostic Immune Nutritional Index (PINI) was applied retrospectively to survival. There were 32 females and 18 males with a median age of 65 (41-88). Median post-operative follow-up was 16 months (IQR 5.5-28.5 months). Thirty-nine had complete, and 11, impending pathological fractures. The observed five-year survival was 19%, with a median survival of 16 months (IQR 5.8-42.5 months). Significantly worse survival was observed with PINI scores < 3.0 (p = 0.003). Excluding three perioperative deaths, 13 complications occurred in 12 patients: Implant failure in six patients (four aseptic loosening, one dislocation and one infection). At the final follow-up, mobility and pain levels were improved in 85% and 100%, respectively. Reconstruction of significant pelvic MBD with the \'ice-cream cone\' reduces pain and improves mobility. Whilst the mortality rate is high, it remains a reasonable option for bed-bound, immobile patients. We advocate the use of an \'ice-cream cone\' prosthesis for selected patients balancing the reported risks with the observed benefits.
UNASSIGNED: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13193-024-01917-x.

Bone tumours are frequent in children but most of them are benign. Moreover, the incidence and type of tumours differ from those of adults. As an orthopaedic surgeon, we will likely encounter a bone lesion in a child and we must be able to distinguish if it is a benign lesion or has malignant characteristics and it is necessary to refer it to a centre specialized in tumours. We will discuss the key points we would have to ask in the medical history, look at the physical examination and the radiological characteristics that will allow us to distinguish between a benign and a malignant bone lesion in a child. When there are doubts about the malignancy of a bone lesion or if the diagnosis is not clear, a biopsy should be performed following certain rules in a specialized centre.

An 11-year-old spayed female Toy Poodle presented with acute tetraparesis. A small subcutaneous mass was found in the right trunk region, and the magnetic resonance revealed a compressive spinal cord lesion due to an irregular bone proliferation at the third cervical vertebra. After surgical resection of the vertebral lesion, the neurological symptoms improved, and the patient could walk on her own. The excised vertebral and subcutaneous masses were diagnosed as a mammary adenocarcinoma on the histopathological examination, with Ki-67 and HER-2 immunohistochemistry staining. This case report highlights the importance of defining the primary tumours of metastatic vertebral tumours and the necessity of palliative surgery to improve the patient\'s quality of life.

Osteosarcomas are rare and highly malignant bone tumours which are composed of malignant mesenchymal cells producing osteoid or immature bone. Maxillary osteosarcomas are rare tumours accounting for less than 1% of head and neck malignancies. Aggressive surgical resection is the main modality of treatment with good reconstruction. Due to the complex anatomy and location of maxilla as well as its proximity to the skull, resection with negative margins is always a challenge and so is the reconstruction so as to reduce the morbidity of the patient and to also give a good functional and cosmetic outcome. Clinical outcomes can be improved with administration of neoadjuvant or adjuvant chemotherapy in selected cases and radiotherapy in case of positive margins. A 41-year-old male patient presented to the outpatient department with complaints of a bulge over the hard palate for the past 1 year. CT scan showed a 6 × 5 × 4 cm osseous expansile lesion arising from the maxillary bone. Biopsy of the tumour showed features of conventional high-grade osteosarcoma. Plate-preserving maxillectomy with tracheostomy was done followed by reconstruction with a double free flap. On post-operative day 1, the flap showed signs of venous congestion and a new free anterolateral thigh flap was done. Patient was discharged on day 7 with a Ryles tube and a tracheostomy tube in situ. Final histopathological examination showed that the tumour was a high-grade chondroblastic osteosarcoma. After regular post-operative visits in the outpatient department and evaluation with flexible laryngoscopy, patient was started on oral feed by day 10 and decannulated by day 15. He has been on regular follow-up for the past 1 year and shows no signs of recurrence or residual disease on clinical examination as well as imaging. Maxillary osteosarcoma is a rare bone tumour which requires accurate imaging and biopsy for accurate surgical planning. The ideal treatment modality is radical resection with negative margins and appropriate reconstruction. With the advent of microvascular surgery, free flaps form the backbone for reconstruction of such large defects.

The free vascularised fibular graft represents the mainstay of intercalary bone defect reconstruction after tumour resection. Different reconstruction techniques are described, favouring internal fixation and possibly overlooking potential advantages of external fixation. This series is a description of the technique performed at our institution using an external fixator for the reconstruction of segmental bone defects which enables to maintain limb length and rotational alignment after large segmental bone resection. Data collected were demographic, surgical and histological data, perioperative complications and postoperative data. Eighteen different complications were encountered in seven patients. Mean reoperation rate was 1.3 per patient but no patient required further interventions in order to correct limb length or rotational alignment. Pin-track infection rate was 6%. The limb salvage rate was 100%. Solid final bone healing was obtained in all patients. External fixation for the reconstruction of intercalary bone defects after tumour resection is a safe technique which might offer the advantage of limb length and alignment preservation.

Forequarter amputation (interscapulothoracic amputation) includes surgical removal of an upper limb and the shoulder girdle, including the scapula and a portion of the clavicle. We aim to report about our recent experience of having to resort to this mutilating surgery and the clinicopathological variables in that context. The study was done at a cancer centre in Northeast India. It was an ambispective study design, where the patient cohort who underwent FQA was identified retrospectively from the operative register of major surgeries for the time period 1st June 2020 to 31st May 2022 (24 months), and these patients were followed up prospectively from 1st June 2022 to 31st May 2023 (1 year). The study variables were obtained from the electronic medical records (EMR), the physical case files and the hospital-based cancer registry (HBCR). There were 7 patients who underwent forequarter amputation (FQA) during the two years, and in the same period, 15 patients underwent limb salvage surgery for tumours around the shoulder girdle. This translates to a FQA rate of 31.8%. The male:female ratio of the patients was 3:4. The median age of the patients was 32 years (range 19 to 59 years). The histologies included osteosarcoma (2), chondrosarcoma (2), Ewing\'s sarcoma (2) and hidradenocarcinoma (1). None of these patients had any distant metastatic disease. Four patients had local disease progression on neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Three of the patients had emergency surgery as a life-saving procedure on account of bleeding from their ulcerated tumours. Two patients had disease which was recurrent and unsalvageable due to the encasement of the neurovascular bundle. The median follow-up was 8 months (range 4 to 18 months). Five patients had distant recurrence with pulmonary metastases (100%) and bone secondaries (14.3%) within a range of 3 to 8 months. None of the patients had any local recurrence. Two patients are on follow-up without any evidence of disease (17 and 18 months respectively). Forequarter amputation is the surgical option when tumours around the shoulder girdle are not amenable to limb-sparing procedures by virtue of their disease extent. These cancers are usually aggressive leading to early distant metastasis.

UNASSIGNED: Due to their aggressive nature and poor prognosis, malignant femoral bone tumors present considerable hurdles. Early treatment commencement is essential for enhancing vital and practical outcomes. In this investigation, deep learning algorithms will be used to analyze magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data to identify bone tumors that are malignant.
UNASSIGNED: The study cohort included 44 patients, with ages ranging from 17 to 78 (22 women and 22 males). To categorize T1 and T2 weighted MRI data, this paper presents an improved DenseNet network model for the classification of bone tumor MRI, which is named GHA-DenseNet. Based on the original DenseNet model, the attention module is added to solve the problem that the deep convolutional model can reduce the loss of key features when capturing the location and content information of femoral bone tumor tissue due to the limitation of local receptive field. In addition, the sparse connection mode is used to prune the connection mode of the original model, so as to remove unnecessary and retain more useful fast connection mode, and alleviate the overfitting problem caused by small dataset size and image characteristics. In a clinical model designed to anticipate tumor malignancy, the utilization of T1 and T2 classifier output values, in combination with patient-specific clinical information, was a crucial component.
UNASSIGNED: The T1 classifier\'s accuracy during the training phase was 92.88% whereas the T2 classifier\'s accuracy was 87.03%. Both classifiers demonstrated accuracy of 95.24% throughout the validation phase. During training and validation, the clinical model\'s accuracy was 82.17% and 81.51%, respectively. The clinical model\'s receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve demonstrated its capacity to separate classes.
UNASSIGNED: The proposed method does not require manual segmentation of MRI scans because it makes use of pretrained deep learning classifiers. These algorithms have the ability to predict tumor malignancy and shorten the diagnostic and therapeutic turnaround times. Although the procedure only needs a little amount of radiologists\' involvement, more testing on a larger patient cohort is required to confirm its efficacy.

UNASSIGNED: Bone transport is a beneficial reconstructive method for bone defects caused by infected non-unions or bone tumours. The Taylor Spatial Frame (TSF) is a three-dimensional corrective external fixator that can be used to achieve bone transport and correct any residual deformities easily at any time. This study reports the results of bone transport using TSF.
UNASSIGNED: This is a retrospective study of ten patients who underwent bone transport using the TSF. The mean age was 32.3 years; the femur was affected in one case and the lower leg in nine. Bone defects were due to infected non-unions in seven cases and bone tumours in three. The duration of external fixation, bone transport distance, distraction index (DI), alignment at the end of correction, leg length discrepancy, and complications were investigated.
UNASSIGNED: The average bone transport distance was 76.0 mm. The external fixation period averaged 367 days with the DI at 20.8 days/cm. Deformity at the docking site was assessed to have an average 2.6° deformity and 2.0 mm translation in the frontal view, as well as 3.3° deformity and 3.7 mm translation in the lateral view. The mean leg length discrepancy was 10.9 mm and the percentage of the mechanical axis (%MA) was 40.6%. Four patients underwent plate conversion after correction and two required additional surgery for non-union at the docking site. Bone union was achieved in all patients and there was no reaggravation of infection or tumour recurrence.
UNASSIGNED: The TSF allowed for the correction of deformities and translations that occurred during bone transport giving excellent results. However, as with bone transport using this or other devices, additional procedures are often needed to obtain consolidation or docking site union.
UNASSIGNED: Shimokawa K, Matsubara H, Hikichi T, et al. Bone Transport with the Taylor Spatial Frame Technique: A Case Series. Strategies Trauma Limb Reconstr 2023;18(2):117-122.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the value of CT-guided bone core biopsy and investigate factors that affect diagnostic yield and biopsy outcome.
METHODS: The single-centre retrospective analysis included 447 patients who had CT-guided core biopsy with a 13-G needle (Bonopty®) from January 2016 to December 2021. Histological results or ≥ 6 months of clinical and radiological follow-up served as outcome references. A successful biopsy was classified as \"diagnostic\" when a definitive diagnosis was made and \"adequate\" when only the malignant or benign nature of the tumour could be determined. Biopsies were \"nondiagnostic\" when the nature of the lesion could not be determined. The occult lesions were defined as not seen on CT but visible on other modalities.
RESULTS: In 275 (62%) females and 172 (38%) males, the overall success rate was 85% (383 biopsies), with 314 (70%) diagnostic biopsies and 69 (15%) adequate biopsies. There was no relationship between biopsy success and the localisation of the lesion, length of biopsy material, or number of biopsy attempts. The lesions\' nature had a statistically significant effect on biopsy success with lytic and mixed lesions having the highest success rate. Occult lesions had the lowest success rate.
CONCLUSIONS: CT-guided bone core biopsy is an effective method in the workup of musculoskeletal diseases with the highest success rate in lytic and mixed lesions. No apparent relationship was found between biopsy success and biopsy length, number of attempts, or localisation of the lesion.

After resection of bone tumour, the risk of cancer recurrence and numerous bone defects continues to threaten the health of patients. To overcome the challenge, we developed a novel multifunctional scaffold material consisting mainly of nano-hydroxyapatite particles (n-HA), MXene nanosheets and g-C3N4 to prevent tumour recurrence and promote bone formation. N-HA has the potential to restrict the growth of osteosarcoma cells, and the combination of MXene and g-C3N4 enables the scaffolds to produce photodynamic and photothermal effects simultaneously under near infrared (NIR) irradiation. Surprisingly, n-HA can further enhance the synergistic anti-tumour function of photodynamic and photothermal, and the scaffolds can eradicate osteosarcoma cells in only 10 min at a mild temperature of 45 ℃. Moreover, the scaffold exhibit exceptional cytocompatibility and possesses the capacity to induce osteogenic differentiation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells. Therefore, this multifunctional scaffold can not only inhibits the proliferation of bone tumour cells and rapidly eradicate bone tumour through NIR irradiation, but also enhances osteogenic activity. This promising measure can be used to treat tissue damage after bone tumour resection.