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Diagnosis of Skeletal Metastases and Assessment of Response to Treatment

  • Conference paper
Metastatic Bone Disease

Abstract

The skeleton is one of the commonest sites of metastatic cancer, and skeletal metastases are associated with significant morbidity which may seriously affect the patients quality of life. There are two main reasons for wanting to detect skeletal metastases, (a) The diagnosis of a painful lesion in a patient who may or may not be known to have cancer, and (b) the staging of cancer. The latter includes both the assessment of the extent of dissemination in a patient with metastatic cancer and the assessment of a patient with apparently “early” cancer in an attempt to stage the disease before starting treatment. However, once a skeletal metastasis has been diagnosed, it is not sufficient to know only about the presence of the metastasis. There are several other questions that must be answered before the patient can be adequately treated. These include: (a) the exact site of the lesion(s); (b) the degree and site of dissemination; (c) the presence of any complications — hypercalcaemia, impending fracture, pathological fracture, spinal instability or neural compression; (d) soft-tissue involvement; and (e) the vascularity of the lesion.

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Authors
  1. C. S. B. Galasko
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universitäts-Frauenklinik, Voss-Straß 9, 69115, Heidelberg, Germany

    Ingo J. Diel , M. Kaufmann  & G. Bastert ,  & 

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© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Galasko, C.S.B. (1994). Diagnosis of Skeletal Metastases and Assessment of Response to Treatment. In: Diel, I.J., Kaufmann, M., Bastert, G. (eds) Metastatic Bone Disease. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-78596-2_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-78596-2_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-57356-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-78596-2

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