Surgical management of pelvic sarcomas in children

Abstract

Pelvic sarcomas are uncommon in childhood. Survival rates of children with pelvic sarcomas have shown significant improvements over the past few decades. Correspondingly, there has been an increase in limb-sparing surgical procedures being performed in these children. This could be attributed in part to the newer generation imaging techniques, wider armamentarium of surgical techniques of reconstruction, and limb-salvage and advances in neo-adjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Reconstruction after resection of pelvic sarcomas while preserving function of the hip and limb can be extremely challenging especially in children where there are issues of growth potential and limb-length discrepancies. This article focuses on the presentation and epidemiology of different types of pelvic sarcomas in children, the current state-of-art of imaging and surgical management of children with pelvic sarcomas.