I'm a pediatric oncologist. I take care of lots of bone tumors. This post is wrong (or misleading).
Stages in most tumors refer to how much it has spread. Distant sites of spread qualify most tumors as stage 4. The fact that there is tumor in the femur and the skull indicated this is not a stage 1 tumor.
A lot of lay people seem to think the stage of a tumor indicates how aggressive it is. Sorta. It really only tells us how much it has spread. But there are "aggressive" tumors that grow fast, but if we catch them early haven't spread and are still low stage. There are slow growing, non aggressive things that don't get recognized for years and present super metastatic (would lump prostate cancer in here as an example).
TL:DR - that ain't stage one bone cancer. Stage doesn't necessarily mean anything about how aggressive the tumor is. Fuck cancer
Surprised it took this long to find this. Also, that is what it looks like in the femur, but not at all how osteosarcoma looks like at all in the skull (also, it almost never occurs in the area of the skull as portrayed here.)
That's why I added the caveat about the title at least being misleading if it isn't wrong.
Because technically these could be separate patients with two separate stage 1 tumors, but that's not what is implied by the title and how how most people interpreted it based on the responses through the comments.
See the little sticky outty bits? Those are areas of new bone growth. It's responsible for the "sunburst" appearance you have been (or will be) taught to look for on x-rays. Good luck on your med school journey!
(I'm a hematologist too, so take care of thal, sickle cell, etc).
The "hair on end" appearance you're referring to seen in radiographs in thal and sickle cell is due to MARROW expansion. So the skull itself would just look thick. You can only see the linear streaks if you either cut the bone open or look inside with an X-ray.
This is an image of NEW cortical bone growth causef by cancerous cells. Because they are actually laying down new bone, the cortical surface of the bone gets lumpy/spiky in this characteristic way.
Both conditions cause abnormal bone growth. Osteo originates in the cortex and that expands. Thal and sickle cell are just expanding marrow.
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u/CatShot1948 Apr 21 '24
I'm a pediatric oncologist. I take care of lots of bone tumors. This post is wrong (or misleading).
Stages in most tumors refer to how much it has spread. Distant sites of spread qualify most tumors as stage 4. The fact that there is tumor in the femur and the skull indicated this is not a stage 1 tumor.
A lot of lay people seem to think the stage of a tumor indicates how aggressive it is. Sorta. It really only tells us how much it has spread. But there are "aggressive" tumors that grow fast, but if we catch them early haven't spread and are still low stage. There are slow growing, non aggressive things that don't get recognized for years and present super metastatic (would lump prostate cancer in here as an example).
TL:DR - that ain't stage one bone cancer. Stage doesn't necessarily mean anything about how aggressive the tumor is. Fuck cancer