Treatments

Bone Cancer Treatments

Your care team will work with you to develop a treatment plan that best suits your needs. You may receive a single form of treatment, or a combination of treatments. Available treatments for bone cancer include:

Chemotherapy

Fast-growing bone cancer is often treated with chemotherapy before surgery. This usually reduces the size of the primary tumor and may destroy tiny areas of cancer cells that have spread to other areas (metastasis).

Surgery

During bone cancer surgery, the surgeon usually removes the tumor and a margin of healthy tissue surrounding the tumor. This helps ensure all the cancer cells are removed. Surgical oncologists and orthopaedic oncologists are physicians who specialize in bone cancer surgery.

Radiation therapy

High-energy X-rays destroy cancer cells’ ability to grow. Radiation oncologists are physicians who specialize in radiation therapy. The most common type of radiation treatment is external-beam radiation therapy. The radiation therapy regimen is usually a specific number of treatments given over a set period of time.

For bone cancer, radiation therapy is most often used for patients who have a tumor that cannot be removed with surgery. Radiation therapy may also be used before surgery to shrink the tumor, or it may be done after surgery to destroy any remaining cancer cells.

Cryoablation

This nonsurgical, localized procedure shrinks and kills tumor cells by freezing them while sparing healthy tissue. Living tissues, including cancer cells, cannot withstand extreme cold. They die when ice forms in the cells’ small vessels and clots, cutting off the tumor’s blood supply. Cryoablation is usually an outpatient procedure that causes minimal pain and offers fast recovery.

Our specialists use cryoablation to treat tumors in the bones, kidneys, lungs and liver when surgical removal of the tumor may be difficult or impossible. An interventional radiologist guides a probe to the tumor using X-ray, ultrasound or computed tomography (CT).

Cryoablation can be repeated as often as needed and can treat new areas that may arise. It can help alleviate pain and other debilitating symptoms tumors may cause.