San-Julian Mikel. Cañadell's Pediatric Bone Sarcomas

Second Edition. — Springer, 2016. — 283 p. — ISBN: 978-3-319-24218-7.In the last 40 years, the outcome for patients affected by malignant bone tumors has improved dramatically. Better knowledge of the disease, improvement of imaging methods, new surgical techniques and particularly the advent of chemotherapy have brought about an unsuspected success in this kind of patient.
Forty years ago, preserving the life of these patients was the only aim of physicians, while nowadays preserving the limb and its function and avoiding complications are the challenges for the orthopedic surgeon, because the survival rates continue to improve. Forty years ago, anybody who tried to preserve a joint near a bone tumor would have been considered a fool. Nowadays, this is a desire common to everybody who treats these patients.
Since 1984, we have used a technique in our Department which has become increasingly popular among orthopedic surgeons interested in bone tumors: physeal distraction (epiphysiolysis) before excision in order to preserve the joint in metaphyseal bone tumors in children. This little book is a concise summary of why we use this technique in selected cases.
The review of histopathological pieces for this second edition indicates that Cañadell’s technique is of broader application than the authors realized at the time of writing the fi rst edition of the book. As times goes on, the indications for the technique have been enlarged, since the results continued being so good. Recently published results from many other experienced centers confi rm the positive results achieved at the authors’ center.
In the time since the publication of the fi rst edition of this book, Dr Cañadell has died; his remarkable contributions in the treatment of pediatric bone sarcomas and the value of this legacy are presented in this book.