Multimodal treatment of craniofacial osteosarcoma with high-grade histology. A single-center experience over 35 years.

High-grade craniofacial osteosarcoma (CFOS) is an aggressive malignancy with a poor prognosis. Our goals were to evaluate treatment outcomes in those treated at a single referral institution over 35 years and to compare our results to the available literature. A retrospective analysis of all 42 patients treated between 1980 and 2015 at Oslo University Hospital, Norway, identified in a prospectively collected database, was conducted. Mean follow-up was 79.6 months. Overall survival at 2 and 5 years was 70.5 and 44.7%, respectively. The corresponding disease-specific survival rates were 73.0 and 49.8%. Treatment was surgery only in eight cases. Additional therapy was administered in 34 patients: chemotherapy in nine, radiotherapy in seven, and a combination of these in 18 cases. Stratified analysis by resection margins demonstrated significantly better survival at 2 and 5 years after radical surgical treatment. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy and subsequent adequate surgery resulted in better survival than surgery alone. Half of the patients either had a primary or familial cancer predisposition. This is the largest single-center study conducted on high-grade CFOS to date. Our experience indicates that neoadjuvant chemotherapy with complete surgical resection significantly improved survival, compared to surgery alone.