Bone Cancer Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Bone Cancer, including details on symptoms, types, treatment.

Multicentric osteosarcoma presenting as retrobulbar mass: a diagnostic enigma.

Wong KF, Shu SJ, Luk IS, Yuen HL, Leung JN, Chan JK

Department of Pathology, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Hong Kong. kfwong@ha.org.hk

Osteosarcoma is the most common primary malignant bone tumor of children and adolescents. It often presents as a solitary lesion; multicentric osteosarcoma with synchronous lesions occurring at multiple skeletal sites is very rare. We report a 9-year-old boy with multicentric osteosarcoma who presented with a left retrobulbar non-sclerotic mass. The multiple lesions in bone were mostly non-sclerotic on radiological examination except for a single lesion in the left tibia. Biopsy of the retrobulbar mass showed an unclassifiable poorly differentiated malignant tumor. Marrow aspiration smears showed many large, often segregated, round cells that expressed NB84a. However, trephine biopsy showed the formation of tumoral osteoid by the malignant cells, finally permitting the definitive diagnosis of osteosarcoma to be made. A hypertetraploid clone with complex structural abnormalities was demonstrated by cytogenetic study.

Published 17 April 2006 in Pediatr Blood Cancer, 46(7): 815-9.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Bone Cancer Research Today. All Rights Reserved.