The rates of growth of skeletal sarcomas

T treatment of skeletal sarcomas, the growth of metastases, and the death of hosts gives surprising insight into the evolution of these neoplasms. This approach has previously been applied to the pulmonary metastases from skeletal sarcomas1, 5 but not to primary skeletal tumors. T h e difficulty in accumulating data on the growth of primary tumors is attributable to the fact that resective therapy of the primary tumor is effected soon after diagnosis and to the indistinct and sometimes immeasurable margins of the tumors. Measurable serial observations of these tumors are, therefore, infrequent, but reported series of skeletal tumors suggest that serial measurement might be effected with greater frequency were there a more general awareness of the pertinence of serial measurements." Continued growth is the inexorably lethal characteristic of sarcomas, and the lethality is directly and the host survival is inversely proportional to the rate of growth.3, 5 T h e quantitation of rates of growth of skeletal tumors is possible when sufficient serial measurements are available.