Treatment
General treatment regimens have not changed much in the past 30 years, in part due to the lack of randomized clinical trials Surgery is the treatment of choice if the tumor is determined to be resectable. Curettage is a commonly used technique. The situation is complicated in a patient with a pathological fracture. It may be best to immobilize the affected limb and wait for the fracture to heal before performing surgery.
Patients with tumors that are not amenable to surgery are treated with radiation therapy. However caution is employed since a majority of recurrent tumors with transformations to the malignant sarcoma phenotype have been in patients receiving radiotherapy for their primary benign lesion. Pharmacotherapy for GCTOB, includes bisphosphonates such as Zoledronate, which are thought to induce apoptosis in the MNGC fraction, preventing tumor-induced osteolysis. Indeed in-vitro studies have shown Zolidronate to be effective in killing osteoclast-like cells. More recently, humanized monoclonal antibodies such as Denosumab targeting the RANK ligand (RANKL) have been employed in treatment of GCTOB in a phase II study. This is based on the notion that increased expression of RANK-ligands by stromal cells plays a role in tumor pathogenesis.
Read more about this topic: Giant-cell Tumor Of Bone
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