Impact of Limb Salvage on Prognosis of Patients Diagnosed With Extremity Bone and Soft Tissue Sarcomas.

Background: Although clinicians and patients with extremity bone and soft tissue (EBST) are increasingly interested in limb salvage surgery (LSS), because of the minimal damage to physical appearance and function, however, there is still a lack of large-scale population studies on whether LSS improves the prognosis of patients.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare the survival of patients with EBST sarcomas after receiving LSS and amputation.

Methods: To conduct the population-based study, we identified 6,717 patients with a histologically diagnosed bone sarcoma and 24,378 patients with a histologically diagnosed soft tissue sarcoma from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database.

Characteristics, incidence, and risk factors for death from fatal pneumonia among patients with primary malignant bone tumors: a SEER-based observational study.

Background: (I) To determine whether patients with malignant bone tumors had a higher risk of dying from pneumonia compared with the general US population; (II) to identify the independent risk factor associated with fatal pneumonia among these patients.

Methods: We identified 18,583 patients diagnosed with primary malignant bone tumors between 1973 and 2016 from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) were calculated based on the mortality data of the general population gathered by the National Center for Health Statistics, which provided the risk of death from pneumonia among cancer patients relative to that of the general population.