Can severe osteosarcoma be cured?

Osteosarcoma is a tumor disease that makes people shudder. Many patients doubt its cure rate in the late stage. However, osteosarcoma is not a terminal disease. If it is discovered and treated in time in the early stage, it can effectively improve the patient's survival rate. If it is discovered late, the difficulty of treating osteosarcoma will increase relatively. So, can osteosarcoma be cured if it is very serious? If it can be treated, what method is better to treat osteosarcoma?

First of all, we can tell patients that osteosarcoma is not a terminal illness clinically. As long as scientific symptomatic treatment is implemented, there is still hope for a cure for late-stage and more serious osteosarcoma. Whether osteosarcoma can be cured depends not only on the condition and cause of the disease itself, but also on good treatment methods. I hope the following treatments can help you.

The treatment of osteosarcoma is mainly based on surgery. Chemotherapy greatly improves the survival rate by inhibiting the occurrence of lung metastasis. Chemotherapy also greatly increases the chance of limb-saving surgery, without the need for amputation. For typical osteosarcoma, if the preoperative chemotherapy is effective, extensive large-scale resection can be performed. However, if chemotherapy is ineffective, radical resection or amputation should be performed. Lung metastases can often be treated with resection.

Chemotherapy is an important adjuvant treatment for osteosarcoma. High-dose chemotherapy combined with multiple drugs can kill the tumor locally. Preoperative chemotherapy (neoadjuvant chemotherapy) can cause tumor cell necrosis, tumor shrinkage, disappearance of edema and new tumor blood vessels in the reaction area, and clearer boundaries of tumor calcification. Clinically, the patient's pain is reduced or disappears, the tumor becomes smaller, the joint range of motion increases, and AKP can be reduced to normal.

High-dose chemotherapy is also an effective method for systemic treatment of osteosarcoma. Chemotherapy can kill micro-metastases in the lungs and throughout the body. This treatment should be performed early. Micro-lesions are more sensitive to chemotherapy than large tumors. Adjuvant chemotherapy can reduce the number of tumors in the lungs and delay their appearance. The key to prolonging the survival of patients with lung metastases is to completely remove the metastases. Chemotherapy can promote the radical cure of the entire disease and increase the cure rate. 20% to 40% of patients abroad can be cured through multiple treatments.

If neoadjuvant chemotherapy cannot achieve tumor necrosis, delaying surgical treatment will affect the survival rate. Because when chemotherapy is ineffective, the tumor will continue to reproduce and microscopic lesions in the lungs will develop. When chemotherapy is effective, delaying radical surgery for the tumor will not jeopardize the survival rate. Preoperative chemotherapy can increase the success rate of limb salvage, so preoperative chemotherapy is safe and beneficial for patients preparing for limb salvage. The effect of preoperative chemotherapy can predict the cure rate. The successful implementation of chemotherapy has enabled osteosarcoma patients to not only improve their survival rate, but also retain their limbs and have a certain degree of joint function.

In addition, for the treatment of severe osteosarcoma, many patients choose biological therapy, which is a treatment method that is gradually emerging. Biological therapy is suitable for osteosarcoma patients at all stages. It uses and stimulates the body's immune response to fight, inhibit and kill cancer cells.