Clinicopathological evaluation of metastatic carcinomas of bone : a retrospective analysis of 114 cases over 10 years.

This is a clinicopathological study of 114 cases of metastatic carcinomas of bone accessioned between 1979 and 1988 at a large cancer hospital. The cases were divided into two groups. The first group comprised of 68 cases (59.64 percent), which included those where the primary was either known (Ia-12 cases), detected after simple investigations (Ib - 18 cases) or detected after extensive investigations (Ic - 38 cases). The lung emerged as the primary source of the metastases in almost half the cases. Hence an X-ray chest should be the basic essential investigation in the workup of skeletal metastasis. The second group comprised of 46 cases (40.35 percent), where the primary remained unknown; 56.5 percent of these were adenocarcinomas. When the histological diagnosis is adenocarcinoma in cases of an occult primary, it is often difficult to pinpoint the primary site after exclusion of organs like breast, prostate, thyroid and kidney.