Mesenchymal chondrosarcoma in the young.

It has been almost a quarter of a century that this rare, still poorly understood and to date insufficiently studied, cartilage neoplasm was described. Based on 19 cases in the young representing 26 percent of chondrosarcoma patients under the age of 21 years, this study found equal sex distribution with the youngest patient being a 6-year old boy. Twelve lesions occurred between the ages of 16 and 21 years. All but one of the tumors arose in the skeleton with nearly half of them involving the lower extremity. Pain was inconsistent and rare at presentation in contrast to the regularity of swelling or a painless mass. Survival analysis revealed a 46 percent 2-year and a 35 percent 5-year survival rate, whereas at 10 years only 20 percent of the patients were still alive. This study attempts to establish the likeliest evolutionary pathway of neoplastic cell differentiation and traces the origin of this tumor to a neoplastic caricature of embryonal endochondral osteogenesis.