Not All Patients Undergoing Stabilization of Impending Pathologic Fractures for Renal Cell Carcinoma Metastases to the Femur Need Preoperative Embolization.

CONCLUSIONS: Preoperative embolization may not be mandatory in the prophylactic treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma of the femur, as demonstrated by the 69% of patients who received zero units of blood despite not receiving embolization. However, assessment of the efficacy of embolization in decreasing blood loss in the current study is limited as a result of biases associated with the database design of the study; the decision of whether to send a patient for embolization should be made on a case-by-case basis. The current study does not identify specific risk factors that should factor into this decision and underscores the need for further research in this regard. A plausible future research design to account for the low numbers and selection bias that limited the current study as well as the existing studies might be a multicenter, retrospective case-control study. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level III, therapeutic study. PMID: 29529636 [PubMed - in process]
Source: Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research - Category: Orthopaedics Authors: Tags: Clin Orthop Relat Res Source Type: research