Current Strategies in Spine Tumor Treatment

Dear Colleagues,

Advances in the treatment of spinal tumors have benefited enormously from the tremendous progress in oncological therapies. At present, multidisciplinary teams guide patients from diagnosis through the course of the diseases, sparing no efforts to achieve better local and systemic control to elevate overall survival rates and increase patients’ quality of life. Substantiated suspicion of a spinal malignancy has to infer standardized diagnostic algorithms, ideally involving all related disciplines in order to start definitive treatment without any delay. A large portfolio of surgical techniques is provided, allowing individual treatment to be tailored to the different underlying tumor biologies and various stages in spinal malignancies. Pursuing that approach, the scope of successful treatment ranges from palliative pain reduction, and minimal invasive fixation techniques for the maintenance or restoration of spinal stability, up to complex multisegmental resections and reconstructions in far rarer primary spinal tumors. The application of intraoperative imaging like fused CT-/ MRI-/ PET- datasets for intra-/ postoperative 3D-imaging, navigation-assisted and stereotactic procedures is as relevant for modern spinal tumor surgery as the use of new implant materials and constructs. Whatever treatment is chosen, and in addition to local and systemic control, the resulting patients´ quality of life is an essential—and increasingly recognized—primary outcome goal.

This Special Issue of Cancers focuses on innovations, the latest technical advances, multidisciplinary interfaces in multimodal treatment and clinical outcome of surgical spinal tumor treatment.

Prof. Dr. Alexander Disch
Prof. Dr. Klaus-Dieter Schaser
Guest Editors

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