Ostéoïde Osteoma: Symptoms, diagnosis and treatment

Osteoma ostéoïde is a bone tumour which is commonly observed in young males. Any bone of the body may be involved, but it is more common in the bones of the upper and lower limbs.

The most common bone in which it occurs are the femur bone or thigh. It can also occur in the spine or spinal column.

The predominant symptom of osteoma ostéoïde is pain. The pain of the tumor is deep, dull and continuous in nature. Often the pain may be present for many months to years.

Generally, the pain is worse at night and is relieved by aspirin. If the tumor is located near a joint, it can cause swelling, stiffness and deformation of joint.

A tumor of the spine can cause pain and abnormal bending of the spine called scoliosis.

Sometimes, there can be no pain and the only feature of presentation may be swelling.

Diagnosis is made by x rays. As the pain comes first the tumor appears if sometimes rays x may seem normal. X-rays show a thickening of bone, along a surface of clarity near the center of the thickening. This area is called the home of the tumor.

It's an x-ray showing an ostéoïde osteoma in the femur. The red arrow shows the nidus.

CT scan may be required if the nidus may not be pin pointed with precision x-ray. This home is between 1 and 1.5 cm in size.

Sometimes if the tumor is not visible even after repeated x-ray and then a bone scan may be necessary to establish the diagnosis if you suspect a history ostéoïde osteoma.

Treatment of this tumour may be of two types

Medical treatment is done by giving aspirin or other pain killer drug, as pain is the main symptom the patient. It was observed that some tumors disappear spontaneously over time. The basis of a medical treatment is to relieve the pain until the tumor resolves spontaneously.

This is recommended only for patients who are ready to take pain relievers for months to years and have x-rays every few months.

Medical treatment is not indicated, or withdrawn in patients who have a sensitive deformityare to the or cannot tolerate pain killersand have the recurrence of pain in the regularly of the doses of analgesics

Surgical treatment is done in patients who do not want medical treatment or in which medical treatment is contraindicated.

During the operation, the nidus was removed completely with a margin of the surrounding bone, otherwise the tumor will develop once more. Complete withdrawal, it is essential that the surgeon can pin point the location of the nidus in operation.

Removal complete nidus results in a 100% cure. If the nidus remains the tumor will reappear. Recurrence usually occurs less than a year.

Sometimes an important part of the bone may be removed and the remaining bones can require support as a bone graft or implant.

Complications that may occur with this surgery include

fracture of the bonestiffness of jointsinfection

As the home is the main node of the treatment and it is a zone of small 1-1.5 cm, therefore other minimum invasive surgery methods have been developed which include

Nucleotide guided radio guided surgical excisionCT excisionPercutaneous percutaneous radio-frequency ablationPercutaneous photo ablationComputer-assisted surgery

These methods of treatment have a recidivism rate higher than conventional surgery. More than one session of these procedures may be necessary.

It benefit main is more short hospital stay, faster recovery, a minimal chance of the rigidity of fracture and joint bone.

How long can you medical treatment take?

Medical treatment may be taken for 1-2 years easily. Dose minimum necessary to relieve the pain must be used.

If this tumor may become malignant?

No malignant transformation of the tumor were observed.

I hope that the information provided was useful. If you have any query you can ask me to contact me page.

This page was created on October 21, 2010.

Other bone tumours

Dysplasia

Bone cyst

Aneurysmatic bone cyst

Chondroma

Osteohondroma

Rewind Osteoma ostéoïde page of bone tumors

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