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Comparative Study
. 2018 Aug 18;19(1):297.
doi: 10.1186/s12891-018-2217-1.

Descriptive epidemiology and outcomes of bone sarcomas in adolescent and young adult patients in Japan

Takashi Fukushima  1   2 , Koichi Ogura  3   4 , Toru Akiyama  5 , Katsushi Takeshita  2 , Akira Kawai  3
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Descriptive epidemiology and outcomes of bone sarcomas in adolescent and young adult patients in Japan

Takashi Fukushima et al. BMC Musculoskelet Disord. .

Abstract

Background: There have been fewer improvements in the clinical outcomes of adolescent and young adult (AYA) patients with cancer than for children and older adults, possibly because fewer studies focus on patients in this age group. The aims of this study were (1) to determine survival rates of bone sarcoma among AYAs in Japan (for comparison with other age groups), and (2) to establish whether belonging to the AYA age group at diagnosis was correlated with poor cancer survival in Japan.

Methods: A total of 3457 patients diagnosed with bone sarcoma (1930 male and 1527 female) were identified from 63,931 records in the Bone and Soft Tissue Tumor (BSTT) registry, a nationwide Japanese database, from 2006 to 2013. The histologic subtypes of bone sarcoma were osteosarcoma, chondrosarcoma, and Ewing sarcoma. The primary endpoints for prognosis were the occurrence of tumor-related death. We compared the epidemiological features of AYAs with other age groups. The cancer survival rates were calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method. Cox proportional hazards models were used to analyze the prognostic factors for cancer survival.

Results: The majority of AYA had osteosarcoma 631 (56.2%), while 198 (17.6%) had chondrosarcoma. The frequency of bone sarcoma occurrence was highest among AYA patients, who accounted for a marked proportion of patients with each type of sarcoma. With the exception of sarcoma type, AYA patients did not significantly differ from patients in other age groups for any of the investigated clinicopathological parameters. Cancer survival of AYA patients was significantly higher than in the elderly. Univariate and multivariate analyses revealed that AYA status was not a predictor of poor cancer survival. However, older age (≥65 years) was a predictor of poor cancer survival in patients with overall bone sarcoma, osteosarcoma, chondrosarcoma.

Conclusion: This epidemiological study is the first to investigate AYA patients with bone sarcoma using the nationwide BSTT Registry. We found that cancer survival of AYA patients was significantly higher than that of the elderly. AYA status was not a predictor of poor cancer survival in Japan.

Keywords: Adolescent and young adult; Bone sarcoma; Cancer survival; Database; Japan.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The research has been approved by the Ethic Committee of the Japanese Orthopaedic Association on March 17, 2016. This was a retrospective study carried out using data from the Bone and Soft Tissue Tumor registry; the authors were not involved in the collection of this data. Patients were informed that their data would be used for research and their data were de-identified before addition to the database. Retrieval of the data from this database occurred in an unlinked fashion. As the data had been anonymized, the Ethical Guidelines for Epidemiological Research (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan), which require ethics approval and informed consent, are not applicable to this study. Based on the Ethical Guidelines on Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan), clinicoepidemiological studies conducted on medical databases constitute research carried out on pre-existing material and information, that did not require any interventions or interactions with patients. For such studies, including this study, obtaining written informed consent from patients is not compulsory.

Consent for publication

Not Applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
a-d Kaplan-Meier survival curves showing disease-specific survival for overall sarcoma (a), osteosarcoma (b), chondrosarcoma (c), and Ewing sarcoma (d), stratified by age. Child: ≤14 years, adolescent and young adult (AYA): 15–39 years, adult: 40–64 years, and elderly: ≥65 years. No elderly patients were included in d as no elderly patients were diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma
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