Treating Bone Metastases: Sparing the Patient Needless Pain

Extract

When cancer spreads to the bones, as it does in half of all patients with the most commonly occurring tumors — breast, lung, and prostate cancer — there is considerable pain and impaired mobility caused by fractures and spinal cord compression.

But while no two patients are alike, too often physicians lump treatment of all bone lesions together, some oncologists contend, resulting in inappropriate therapy and needless suffering. Moreover, they say, treatment in some cases comes too late.

Speaking at a recent Radiological Society of North America meeting in Chicago, William E. Powers, M.D., and Vaneerat Ratanatharathorn, M.D., told participants that up to one-third of patients whose cancer spreads to the bone suffer fractures and spinal cord compression. Hypercalcemia, a life-threatening metabolic disorder caused by bone resorption, can also occur.

Despite these possible complications and the fact that bone lesions can be confirmed easily by bone scans after the patient complains of pain, early treatment is “just not done very often,” said Powers, the retired head of radiation oncology at Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit.