Living bone graft for giant cell tumor of bone

  Giant cell tumor of bone is one of the more common primary bone tumors in China. It is an actively growing tumor that is very destructive to bone erosion and can cause severe disability and amputation if not treated in a timely manner, and in a few cases, it can metastasize and be fatal. Tumors in the adjacent joints are slow growing, with local swelling, pain and pressure, and often limited joint mobility.  Giant cell tumor of bone is pathologically graded into three levels according to benign and malignant degrees: grade 1 is benign, grade 2 is junctional, and grade 3 is malignant. However, the clinical presentation does not exactly match the pathologic grading. Sometimes the pathologic presentation is grade 1, but the clinical behavior is very aggressive.  Giant cell tumors of bone usually occur close to the joints, which makes treatment very problematic. On the one hand, we need to remove the tumor completely and expand the resection to reduce recurrence, while on the other hand, we need to preserve the function of the joint and cannot expand the tumor resection indefinitely. The traditional surgery is to scrape out the tumor, then use iodine or zinc chloride to inactivate the lesion, and finally the extra cavity formed for bone grafting. However, this traditional surgical treatment has a very high recurrence rate, and some of them become malignant after several recurrences. This requires us to consider that the treatment of this type of bone tumor is limited to complete resection of the tumor to ensure that the recurrence rate is minimized. As for the bone defects caused by extensive resection of the tumor, we will try to reconstruct them.  There are two reconstruction methods for large bone defects caused by giant cell tumor: one method is to use artificial joint prosthesis, which is mainly used for larger hip and knee joints. The disadvantage is that the artificial prosthesis has a certain service life, usually about 5-10 years, some only a few years before loosening, doctors often need to replace the artificial joint prosthesis several times, with the risk of infection. Another method is to use its own tissue to rebuild bone and joint function, usually using fibula graft with blood vessels to rebuild bone and joint defects. The disadvantage of this method is that it is technically difficult and should not be performed in most surgical hospitals. The advantage is that the reconstructed structure is your own tissue and can be used permanently without the need for secondary surgery to replace it, and the possibility of infection is reduced.