Comparison of the effects of local treatment strategies in non-metastatic Ewing sarcoma of bone.

BACKGROUND

To investigate the optimal local treatment strategies for patients with non-metastatic Ewing sarcoma (ES) of bone.

METHODS

Patients with ES of bone were identified using the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results database. Kaplan-Meier log-rank test and Cox regression models were performed to assess the effect of the types of local treatment strategies on cause-specific survival and overall survival.

RESULTS

560 patients were included with a median age of 16 years. A total of 284, 162 and 114 patients received surgery alone, surgery and radiotherapy, and radiotherapy alone, respectively. The types of local treatment strategies had no effect on survival outcomes in multivariate analysis. In the subgroup analysis of patients with tumor diameter <8 cm, surgery ± radiotherapy had a significantly improved cause-specific survival (P = 0.039), and had potential to improve overall survival (P = 0.070) in multivariate analysis. The local treatment strategies had no effect on survival in patients with different tumor location.

CONCLUSION

There is no local treatment of choice for non-metastatic ES of bone in terms of survival. More well-designed studies are needed to confirm our findings and investigate the role of various local treatment strategies in relation to primary tumor diameter.