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Treaments other than surgical for Chondrosarcoma

firestopper
firestopper CSN Member Posts: 1
in Bone Cancers #1

Hello, I recently ( a week ago) had surgery where they replaced 75% of my femur to remove the cancer portion. My doctor has told me that the only treatment for my cancer "Dedifferentiated Chondrosarcoma" is to remove it via surgery and that chemo and radio have no effect... Does anybody have experience with this type of cancer? My bone scan and organ scans have all shown to be clear for now and suposedely the tumor was encapsulated in the femur, but I want to give myself every chance possible to hit it while its young...Are there treatments that can be used with sugery to give that extra punch?

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  • sasha_hardwick
    sasha_hardwick CSN Member Posts: 3
    #2
    update

    My husband was just diagnosed dedifferentiated chondrosarcoma. Wondering how youre doing?

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  • brayfield
    brayfield CSN Member Posts: 1
    #3
    secondary treatments

    I went through surgery to remove one vertebrae and part of another because of primary spinal chondrosarcoma at the end of 2014.  The up-to-date medical information service then and now shows if chondrosarcoma can be removed en bloc (as one unit), with wide margins around the tumor, the use of radiation therapy is not normally needed.  I'm the skeptical sort, and have access to medical literature, so I verified this through reviews of about a dozen studies.  If your doctor says the tumor removal was incomplete, or resection through the tumor may have occurred, chemo is ineffective for chondrosarcomas in general, but proton beam therapy (PBT) has shown promise.  I can also tell you IMRT, or conventional X-ray therapy, are ineffective comparatively (M.D. Anderson and Japanese studies).  If your doctors directs you toward IMRT for a chondrosarcoma, question them, or find a second opinion.  Insurance is now reimbursing PBT centers in the same range as is done for IMRT (I had a second opinion try to get me to do IMRT despite what the medical literature showed, so financials for both were discussed).

    Because of where my chondrosarcoma was, en bloc was not possible, so I was later sent for PBT after surgery.  If your doctor says you don't need radiation after your surgery because of en bloc resection, that's great news.

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