The Orthopedic-Vascular Multidisciplinary Approach Improves Patient Safety in Surgery for Musculoskeletal Tumors: A Large-Volume Center Experience

Objective: Wide-margin resection is mandatory for malignant bone and soft tissue tumors. However, this increases the complexity of resections, especially when vessels are involved. Patients in this high-risk clinical setting could be surgically treated using the multidisciplinary orthopedic-vascular approach. This study was carried out in this healthcare organization to evaluate patient safety in term of oncologic outcomes and reduction of the complication rate. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 74 patients (37 males, 37 females; mean age 46 years, range 9-88) who underwent surgical excision for bone/soft tissue malignant tumors closely attached to vascular structures from October 2015 to February 2019. Vascular surgery consisted of isolation of at least one vessel (64 patients), bypass reconstruction (9 patients), and end-to-end anastomosis (1 patient). Mean follow-up was 27 months. Patients' demographics, tumor characteristics, adjuvant treatments, type of orthopedic and vascular procedures, and oncologic and functional outcomes and complications were recorded. Results: Overall survival was 85% at 3 years follow-up. In total, 22 patients experienced at least one major complication requiring further surgery and 13 patients experienced at least one minor complication, whereas 17 reported deviations from the normal postoperative course without the need for pharmacological or interventional treatment. Major complications were higher in pelvic resections compared to limb-salvage procedures (p = 0.0564) and when surgical time was more than 4 h (p = 0.0364) at univariate analysis, whereas the most important multivariate independent predictors for major complications were pelvic resection (p = 0.0196) and preoperative radiotherapy (p = 0.0426). Conclusions: A multidisciplinary ortho-vascular approach for resection of malignant bone and soft tissue tumors tightly attached to important vascular structures should be considered a good clinical practice for patient safety.