Bone and cancer: the osteoncology

In recent years clinicians have witnessed a radical change in the relationship between bone and cancer, with in particular an increase in bone metastases incidence due to an improvement of patients survival. Bone metastases are responsible for the high morbidity in cancer patients with a strong clinical impact. For all these reasons, efforts have been directed to this important field with the foundation of the osteoncology, a new scientific and clinical branch involved in the management of patients with bone cancer disease, including primary bone tumors and bone metastases. Another innovative and important osteoncology topic is the Cancer Treatment Induced Bone Loss (CTIBL) that is mainly caused by antitu-moral treatment with bone resorption induction. The diagnostic and therapeutic options are described briefly in order to highlight the importance of the multi-disciplinary approach in this new field.