Surgically-challenging chondrosarcomas of the chest wall: five-year follow-up at a single institution

Chest wall primary malignant tumors are among the rarest cartilaginous tumors, accounting for 8% of cases. Additionally, the chest wall is not the most common site for chondrosarcomas (15% of chondrosarcoma cases). One can reasonably conclude that this lack of cases is responsible for the scarcity of studies on thoracic chondrosarcomas. The optimal treatment for this tumor has not improved over time; radical surgery remains the only curative option. There is no effective chemotherapy, and the tumor is relatively radio-insensitive. Therefore, the pursuit of widemargin resections often leads to the need for complex chest wall reconstruction techniques. Even though this series addresses a small sample of patients, it includes a considerable number of tumors that were surgically challenging due to their large size and/or anatomically unfavorable locations for performance of wide-margin resections.