Primary malignant tumors of bone: incidence in Ibadan, Nigeria.

An account of primary malignant bone tumors in Africans is presented in this series. The study analyzes 170 Nigerians with bone neoplasms diagnosed over the 17-year period 1960-1976. It accounted for 1.28 percent of tumors registered in the Cancer Registry of the University College Hospital, Ibadan. There were 119 male and 51 female patients, with ages ranging from 4 to 75 years. The most common symptom was painful swelling. Trauma was associated with this condition. The pattern of behavior of these tumors conforms with other reports in the literature, but it showed some geographical variations. The most common tumor in the series was osteosarcoma, although there was no association of Paget's disease, which is very rare in Nigerians. Attention is also called to the presence of osteolytic conditions in the metaphysical region of a long bone, which may be due to osteomyelitis caused by Histoplasma duboisii and which has been confused with a malignant bone tumor in this environment.