Surgical and Radiation Treatment Options for Patients with Advanced Cancer
If a bone is at risk of fracture or has already fractured, surgery to the bone is performed to manage or prevent further complications. For patients with advanced- stage cancer, surgery to the bone is a major operation, and recovery can often be challenging and require hospitalization.
When drug treatments are not effective, one option to treating bone pain due to metastases in the spine is the injection of a special kind of cement, a technique called Vertebroplasty, into the bone of the vertebra. Kyphoplasty, another option for cancer that has spread to the spine, repairs fractures and restores the vertebrae to the correct position using a balloon that creates a mold for bone cement.35
Two current trends in radiation therapy for bone pain are hypofractionation, in which oncologists administer fewer larger radiation doses rather than many smaller doses,36 and sterotactic body radiation therapy in which the dose is focused on a specific portion of bone or other tissue, often over several days.37,38
