Surgical treatment of metastatic long bone disease.

A retrospective study of the results of operative treatment of 60 long bones secondaries in 46 patients was carried out. The mean period of follow-up was 10 months. The most common primary in this study was carcinoma of the breast (28.2%), followed by carcinoma of the lung (21.7%) and unknown primary (10.9%). Three groups of patients were studied--pathological fracture group, prophylactic fixation group and a mixed group. In the pathological fracture group, 70% of patients achieved good to excellent pain relief and 60.9% was able to walk with or without walking aids. In the prophylactic group, all the patients achieved good to excellent pain relief and 60% were able to ambulate with or without walking aids. In the mixed group, all the patients achieved good to excellent pain relief and 66.6% of the patients were able to walk with aids. The operative mortality in both the pathological fracture group and prophylactic fixation group was 10% and 33.3% in the mixed group. Multiple internal fixation performed at one operative session was associated with high operative mortality (50%).