The clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis of young patients with chondrosarcoma of bone

PURPOSE: Clinicopathologic characteristics and treatment outcomes for young patients (less than 40 years) with chondrosarcoma of bone are rarely documented. The purpose of this study is to determine the clinicopathological characteristics and identify the survival predictors for this rare population. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database to identify young patients with chondrosarcoma of bone between 1973 and 2016. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were conducted to determine the independent risk factors. Kaplan-Meier method was used to intuitively show the survival difference stratified by different treatments. RESULTS: A total of 1312 eligible young patients with chondrosarcoma of bone were analyzed this study. The mean age at diagnosis was 28.5 ± 0.2 years old (ranging from 1 to 40 years). 51.1% of cases were located in the extremity. More than two-thirds of patients (71.4%) were high grade. The majority of the patients (92.0%) received surgery, only 11.8% of patients received radiotherapy, and only 10.4% of patients received chemotherapy. The 5-year overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) rates of this cohort were 88.5% and 89.1%, respectively. According to the results of multivariate analysis, nine variables were significantly correlated with OS and CSS, including gender, year of diagnosis, tumor site, tumor grade, tumor subtype, distant metastasis, tumor size, surgery, and chemotherapy. CONCLUSION: Young patients with chondrosarcoma of bone experienced better prognosis. Surgery was significantly correlated with increased survival, while chemotherapy was significantly correlated with decreased survival. Radiotherapy was not a meaningful survival predictor of young patients with chondrosarcoma of bone. Prospective clinical trials are needed in the future to determine the effect of radiotherapy and chemotherapy on prognosis of those patients.