Bone scans A bone scan can give more detailed information about the inside of your bones than an X-ray. During a bone scan, a small amount of radioactive material is injected into your veins. Abnormal areas of bone will absorb the material at a faster rate than normal bone and will show up as "hot spots" on the scan.
Using a bone scan when cancer is suspected can be particularly helpful because the scan can find both primary cancer—or, cancer that started in your bones—and bone metastases, which is cancer that has spread to the bones from another part of your body.
Because cancer cells multiply rapidly, they will appear as a hot spot on a bone scan. This is due to the increased bone metabolism and bone repair in the area of the cancer cells.
Overview. Bone cancer can begin in any bone in the body, but it most commonly affects the pelvis or the long bones in the arms and legs. Bone cancer is rare, making up less than 1 percent of all cancers. In fact, noncancerous bone tumors are much more common than cancerous ones.
Biopsy. The most definitive way of diagnosing bone cancer is to take a sample of affected bone and send it to a laboratory for testing. This is known as a biopsy. A biopsy can determine exactly what type of bone cancer you have and what grade it is.
CT scans are usually used to help form an initial bone cancer diagnosis and to see whether the cancer has spread to other areas of the body. CT scans may also be used to guide the biopsy needle.
Tumour markers
If you have osteosarcoma, your doctor will measure your ALP level (alkaline phosphatase). This chemical is found in your blood and is a measure of bone activity. If you have a bone cancer, the levels of bone cell activity in the affected bone may be higher than normal.
Bone pain can cause a dull or deep ache in a bone or bone region (e.g., back, pelvis, legs, ribs, arms). Bone pain feels different than muscle or joint pain.
Rarely, people with a bone sarcoma may have symptoms such as fever, generally feeling unwell, weight loss, and anemia, which is a low level of red blood cells.
Bone scans show changes in your bones, but they don't tell you if it's because of cancer or not. You may have to have other tests to figure out what the changes mean. These extra tests will tell you if the spots are cancerous or related to another problem, like arthritis.
In an adult, dark spots usually indicate that there is a problem with the skeleton. The increased bone-making activity that the dark spots represent is the skeleton's response to the problem. For example, if there is a bone fracture, bone cells will very quickly begin to make new bone to try to repair it.
Since bone cancer starts in the bones, it's impossible to know about it through the naked eye. For that reason, bone cancer in a person can go undetected for five years and even more in a few cases. This long delay can lead to difficulty providing treatment and diagnosing the person's exact condition.
What does bone cancer feel like? The most common bone cancer symptom is pain, though sometimes these tumors are painless. The pain may be mild or severe. Many people describe it as throbbing, aching or stabbing.
Symptoms of primary bone cancer can be very general and often appear similar to the symptoms of sports injuries, growing pains or many other common conditions such as tendonitis or arthritis. They may also vary depending on the location and the size of the tumour.
Bone x-rays may show if the cancer started in the bone (primary bone cancer). Or if the cancer spread to the bone from somewhere else in the body (secondary bone cancer). Sometimes the way the bone looks on an x-ray can help the doctor tell which type of bone cancer it is. This is often true for osteosarcoma.
Although bone cancer can occur at any age, two of the most common types (osteosarcoma and Ewing sarcoma) occur primarily in children and young adults. Certain types of bone cancer, such as osteosarcoma, are more common among men than women.
While bone pain is most likely due to decreased bone density or an injury to your bone, it can also be a sign of a serious underlying medical condition. Bone pain or tenderness could be the result of infection, an interruption in the blood supply, or cancer. These conditions require immediate medical attention.
Sometimes this is the first sign that cancer has spread to the bones. Bone pain. This is the most common symptom of bone metastases. The pain may be dull and achy or sharp with a sudden onset.
High-grade bone cancer looks very abnormal compared with healthy tissue and tends to grow and spread more quickly. High-grade tumors may also be described as poorly differentiated. The bone cancer grade may help your care team determine how quickly the cancer is likely to spread and how best to treat it.
Bone cancer develops in the skeletal system and destroys tissue. It can spread to distant organs, such as the lungs. The usual treatment for bone cancer is surgery, and it has a good outlook following early diagnosis and management.
Because MRIs can reveal abnormal appearance or physical abscess in bones, they are more effective at detecting bone cancer than traditional bone scans. They can also identify cancer earlier than bone scans can, allowing MRIs to detect the disease before cancer reaches the bones.
CT scans of the bones can provide more detailed information about the bone tissue and bone structure than standard X-rays of the bone, thus providing more information related to injuries and/or diseases of the bone.
It starts in an early form of bone cells. It most often occurs in young people between the ages of 10 and 30, but about 1 in 10 osteosarcomas develop in people older than 60. It's rare in middle-aged people, and is more common in males than females. These tumors develop most often in bones of the arms, legs, or pelvis.
Pain in the area of the tumor is the most common sign of bone cancer. At first, the pain might not be there all the time. It may get worse at night or when the bone is used, such as when walking for a tumor in a leg bone. Over time, the pain can become more constant, and it might get worse with activity.