Quality of Life of Patients With Bone Tumors of the Lower Limbs Treated With Salvage Surgery: a Long-term Follow-up Study.

Musculoskeletal cancers are extremely rare, accounting for approximately 0.2% of all cancers, 14% are bone sarcomas, which occur more frequently in children and adolescents. The most frequent location is at the metaphyseal level of the femur (42%) and tibia (19%).

Surgery and chemotherapy treatments have significantly increased survival rates for patients with bone tumor. Early rehabilitation of these patients after surgery is to promote recovery as early as possible with maximum autonomy. In literature, data about the association between the early functional recovery and quality of life are few. Long-term studies about the quality of life of these patients are so necessary. The quality of life is measured with several scale that included a set of non-specific domains for bone tumor patients. For this reason, a specific assessment scale was introduced and validated in 2013 to measure the quality of life of patients with bone cancer of the lower limbs, the Bt-DUX scale.

In 2019 the Bt-DUX scale was validated in Italian.

Considering the rarity of the disease, and verified that the number of patients treated in 2019 and 2020, is 30 and 32, respectively, the investigators estimate to enroll from January 2019 to June 2023 a number of patients equal to 100, considering a rejection rate of 10%.

Patient characteristics and scale values will be summarized using descriptive statistics (absolute frequencies and percentages for categorical variables, mean and standard deviation or median and interquartile range for continuous variables).