Osteosarcoma in the bones

For my steam project, I am talking about Osteosarcoma and how it affects bone growth, stages of bone development, and the repairing/treatment of osteosarcoma. 

Osteosarcoma is a type of bone cancer, and is a primarily malignant tumor that originates in the skeleton of the body. It is characterized by the production of osteriod tissue or immature bone tissue. Osteosarcoma frequently begins from mesenchymal cell tissue and is most commonly developed at the end of long bones such as the femur, humerus, and tibia. 

Osteosarcoma is common in children, teenagers, and young adults. It occurs most frequently during puberty when bones are growing rapidly. Studies say bone growth, hormonal changes, and/or development associated with puberty may be involved in osteosarcoma etiology. Osteosarcoma peaks at a later age and reaches higher rates in males 15-19 compared to females who peak at the ages of 10-14. Most tumors in young adolescents develop in the bones around the knee either in the lower part of the thigh bones or upper part of the shin bones and the upper arm bone close to the shoulder. As osteosarcoma increases in size the surrounding bone material becomes soft and causes internal pressure in the bone that can cause it to fracture. Osteosarcoma can grow on the exterior surface of bones and provide hard spikes that radiate outwards. 

Diagnosing low-grade osteosarcoma can be hard radiologically due to the appearance of low-grade osteosarcoma as it can look like fibrous dysplasia, desmoplastic fibroma, nonossifying fibroma, osteoblastoma, and aneurysmal bone cysts. This is because there are overlapping features with benign lesions like fibrous dysplasia and desmoplastic fibroma. The key feature to determining low-grade osteosarcoma from the benign mimics is to identify permeative growth patterns. 

There are two stages of osteosarcoma in the bones. First low-grade osteosarcoma also known as parosteal osteosarcoma. Low-grade osteosarcomas are the slowest growing osteosarcomas. The tumors look like normal bone and have a few dividing cells when seen under a microscope. Osteosarcoma are low-grade malignant tumors composed of parallel arrays of osseous trabeculae intermixed with fibroblasts- like tumor cells with band looking nuclei.

The next stage is high-grade osteosarcoma. This is the fastest growing type of osteosarcoma. High-grade osteosarcoma is a complex and aggressive tumor that has a propensity to involve the growing metaphysis of the extremity bones. They don’t look like normal bone and many cancer cells are in the process of dividing into new cells. High-grade osteosarcoma has telangiectatic, small cell.Telangiectatic 

Is assumed to extract from either transformed osteoblasts or stem cell mesenchymal origin. Telangiectatic osteosarcoma is seen in children, adolescents, and young adults. Telangiectatic osteosarcoma is common at the ages 17 years and ranges from 15 to 20 years with a male-to-female ratio of 2 to 1.

           Symptoms of osteosarcoma often start at the bone where the cancer is affected. Bone and joint pain might come and go at first and can be mistaken for growing pains. Misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis and treatment are common in osteosarcoma due to its rarity and heterogeneity. Treatment options can vary. A biopsy is a procedure that removes a sample of the tissue for testing in a lab and can be done to test osteosarcoma. Patients and doctors also worry about whether the symptom interval affects the development of tumor volume. Larger tumor volume, to a certain extent, can lead to inferior chemotherapy response. Chemotherapy is widely used to treat osteosarcoma and has the best outcomes in the long run for the body. Chemotherapy treats cancer with strong medication. It is used to shrink the cancer and make it easier to remove if surgery is needed. Surgery operations can be done in a way that removes all the cancer without amputation the bone.