GIANT-CELL TUMOR OF BONE

Current Status of Problems in Diagnosis and Treatment

¹ Department of Pathology, Wadsworth General Hospital, Veterans Administration Center, West Los Angeles

The uncertainty that still prevails in many quarters as to what should properly be regarded as giant-cell tumor of bone (stripped of its spurious variants) has had the effect of vitiating most of the contributions to the literature of the past ten years. This confusion must be dispelled before reports in regard to the efficacy of treatment, by one method or another, are to have much significance. To this end, the writer has outlined some of the pertinent advances of the past decade concerning the clinical and pathological features of genuine giant-cell tumor and of certain other lesions which are frequently mistaken for it. The necessity for establishing accurate pathological diagnosis before instituting treatment, whether surgical or irradiation, has again been emphasized.

In regard to therapy, the writer has tried to survey some of the specific problems entailed in the treatment, by either method, of a giant-cell tumor that is approached for the first time, and of one that has already recurred after treatment. Significant progress in the solution of these problems can only come about through the effective planning, possibly through the agency of a giant-cell-tumor registry, of well controlled, long-range clinical experiments that alone can supply the data upon which a sound therapeutic program must eventually be based.

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