The most common of age distribution ranges from second to fourth decade of life and patients with giant cell tumors (GCT) aged less than 18 years is more uncommon. We are aiming to reveal what the conservative nerve-sparing surgery values for adolescent patients with sacral GCT. We retrospectively reviewed 15 adolescent patients with sacral GCT aged <eighteen years, who received the conservative nerve-sparing surgery at our center from 2007 to 2018. Four patients presented with tumor of Campanacci grade II and 11 patients with grade III. According to the location of tumor at the sacrum, we classified the surgical resection of sacral giant cell tumor into three types. In our adolescent cohort, nine had the aortic balloon occlusion and five received the selective arterial embolization. All patients were free of disease and no one had the pulmonary metastasis or died of disease. All five wound complications required the debridement. 6 out of 15 patients had the local recurrence that required surgery treatment. The average time to recurrence after initial surgery in the present adolescent cohort was 22.4 months. Two patients had the surgical site infection and three had the wound dehiscence. One had the femoral artery thrombosis due to the aortic balloon occlusion and received the surgical removal of thrombosis. With the help of preoperative selective embolization and intraoperative aortic balloon occlusion, adolescent patients undergoing conservative nerve-sparing surgery for giant cell tumor of sacrum based on the proposed surgical resection classification have an acceptable clinical outcome and neurologic function.
Keywords: Conservative surgery; Giant cell tumor; Nerve salvage; Recurrence; Sacrum.
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