Childhood periosteal chondroma.

We report here three fully documented cases of periosteal chondroma diagnosed and treated in our hospital. There have been few references since Lichtenstein first described this condition as a separate tumour, and none of them concerned children under 10 years old. deSantos accurately describes the radiological features of the tumour. All of our patients were under 10 years old at the moment of the appearance of the lesion, which was always detected in the long bones of the upper limbs. The study included a previous histological examination in two cases and a follow-up in all of them. From this study we learned that invasive diagnosis procedures are unnecessary as we could follow the behaviour and evolution of this cartilaginous benign tumour for a long period of time.