Epidemiology of bone tumours.

As primary bone tumours are relatively uncommon, it is difficult to assemble meaningful data with regard to their relative frequency and incidence. An extensive investigation of the data on 2,627 cases collected between 1973 and 1987 from 9 geographical areas in the United States showed that primary bone sarcomas constituted only 0.2% of all malignant tumors (table 1) [2]. The incidence rate was 0.8/100,000, and showed no tendency to change during the time period under study. According to the Swedish National Cancer Registry 2004, the incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants was 0.6 for chondrosarcoma, 0.42 for osteosarcoma and 0.29 for Ewing’s sarcoma. The relative frequencies are reported below exclude lymphohaematopoetic tumours. In the above investigation, osteosarcoma was the most frequent primary bone sarcoma, followed by chondrosarcoma, Ewing’s sarcoma and chordoma. There were only 4 cases of adamantinoma among the 2,627 cases studied. One major monograph on bone tumors [3] reviewed 4,138 malignant primary bone tumours. In this series osteosarcoma was the most frequent tumour, followed by chondrosarcoma, Ewing’s sarcoma and chordoma. Twenty-three adamantinomas were diagnosed among the cases studied. There were 2,028 benign tumours. The 5 most common benign tumours were osteochondroma, giant cell tumour, chondroma, osteid osteoma and metaphyseal fibrous defect.