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.

A comparative analysis of functional outcomes in adolescents and young adults with lower-extremity bone sarcoma.

Ginsberg JP, Rai SN, Carlson CA, Meadows AT, Hinds PS, Spearing EM, Zhang L, Callaway L, Neel MD, Rao BN, Marchese VG

Division of Oncology, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA. ginsbergji@email.chop.edu

BACKGROUND: Comparison of functional mobility and quality of life is performed in patients with lower-extremity bone sarcoma following either amputation, limb-sparing surgery, or rotationplasty with four different types of outcome measures: (1) an objective functional mobility measure that requires patients to physically perform specific tasks, functional mobility assessment (FMA); (2) a clinician administered tool, Musculoskeletal Tumor Society Scale (MSTS); (3) a patient questionnaire, Toronto Extremity Salvage Scale (TESS); and (4) a health-related quality of life (HRQL) measure, Short Form-36 version 2 (SF-36v.2). PROCEDURE: This is a prospective multi-site study including 91 patients with lower-extremity bone sarcoma following amputation, limb-sparing surgery, or rotationplasty. One of three physical therapists administered the quality of life measure (SF-36v.2) as well as a battery of functional measures (FMA, MSTS, and TESS). RESULTS: Differences between patients who had amputation, limb-sparing surgery, or rotationplasty were consistently demonstrated by the FMA. Patients with limb sparing femur surgery performed better than those patients with an above the knee amputation but similarly to a small number of rotationplasty patients. Several of the more conventional self-report measures were shown to not have the discriminative capabilities of the FMA in these cohorts. CONCLUSION: In adolescents with lower-extremity bone sarcoma, it may be advantageous to consider the use of a combination of outcome measures, including the FMA, for objective functional mobility assessment along with the TESS for a subjective measure of disability and the SF-36v.2 for a quality-of-life measure.

Published 22 October 2007 in Pediatr Blood Cancer, 49(7): 964-9.
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