Background: Little is known about the clinical outcome of children and adolescent patients with primary malignant sacral tumours.
Method: We retrospectively reviewed 40 patients with malignant sacral tumours aged ≤ 18 years, receiving surgery based on the previous proposed surgical resection classification at our centre from 2003 to 2018. The following data were collected in the present study: age, gender, radiological images, detailed information of the surgical procedure, pulmonary and other metastasis at presentation, complications, local recurrence, metastasis, and death during the follow-up were recorded from the clinical and follow-up files.
Results: The mean follow-up was 30.7 months (range, 5.2-146.7 months). The incidence of local recurrence was 27.5% (11/40). Seven cases had surgical site infection and there were 12 cases of wound dehiscence. One had a deep venous thrombosis and one had femoral artery thrombosis. Three had fixation breakage and then received a revision. Tenty-two patients (22/40, 55%) were free of disease. A total of 13 deaths (13/40, 32.5%) were observed and the mean overall survival period was 17.1 months (range, 6.3-34.2 months), and a pulmonary metastasis occurred in 18 patients (45%, 18/45) at the 12.0 ± 10.3 months (range, 2.2-35.3 months) after initial surgery. The overall survival rates at one, two and five years were respectively 88.3%, 62.5%, and 51.9%. In the stratification analysis of young patients with primary malignant tumours at the sacrum after surgery, it revealed the influence of pathological grade, location, and age on the oncological outcomes. Kaplan-Meier estimated a survivorship curve of patients with high and low-grade malignant tumours and showed statistical differences in the overall survival and distant relapse-free survival rates between two groups. Afterwards, the result demonstrated that paediatric patients aged ≤ 14 years had worse prognosis than those aged > 14 years.
Conclusions: It is satisfactory for the outcome of surgical treatment of children and adolescent patients with primary malignant sacral tumours based on proposed surgical classification. Furthermore, paediatric patients aged ≤ 14 years have the tendency of poor prognosis compared to adolescent aged > 14 years.
Keywords: Complication; Malignant; Prognosis; Sacral tumour; Surgery.