Global Consensus-Finding Meeting Aims to Improve the Management of Chondrosarcoma Complications

R. Lor Randall, MD, FACS

Treatment decision making in orthopedic oncology can often be hindered by sparse or conflicting evidence. As such, efforts to explore, research, and provide a global consensus on highly debated topics within disease subtypes such as sarcoma are vital to improving and standardizing care, according to R. Lor Randall, MD, FACS.

The 2024 Birmingham Orthopedic Oncology Meeting was designed to address this need for conclusive guidelines on disease management within sarcoma. The 2-day event will include representation from over 120 sarcoma centers around the world to represent the global scientific community.

The topic of day 1 will be “Chondrosarcoma” and the topic of day 2 will be “Infected Oncology Reconstructions.” Participants will vote on 10 consensus statements after a short overview of the topics and a 5-minute presentation delivered by the authors of the submitted evidence. Clinicians from any specialty can attend and vote on the consensus statements.

“We hope to come away with a real thought agreement about the best ways to manage some of these complications related to aggressive treatments for chondrosarcoma,” said Randall, who is the David Linn Endowed Chair for Orthopedic Surgery, the chair of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, and a professor at UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, in Sacramento, California. He added that there are plans to publish these conclusions in a major journal.

In an interview with OncLive^®, Randall provided details about the planned consensus meeting and its main topic of discussion, explained the rationale for its inception, and emphasized the importance of this meeting for orthopedic oncologists treating chondrosarcoma.

For more information, or to register for the meeting, please visit:

https://www.clockworkmedical.com/boom/boom-registration/

OncLive: Could you briefly provide some background on the 2024 Birmingham Orthopedic Oncology Meeting?

Randall: [This is] an upcoming global meeting that’s going to be happening in Birmingham, in the United Kingdom [next year]. There’s going to be a group of orthopedic oncologists [from] 120 sarcoma centers around the world that are going to be coming together on January 29th and 30th [of 2024]. It’s a consensus-building meeting on chondrosarcoma.

Why is it important to improve awareness of chondrosarcoma and education on how to address its associated complications?

Chondrosarcoma is the most common primary bone sarcoma in adults that we treat as orthopedic oncologists. Most chondrosarcomas are low grade, but they can become intermediate- and high-grade [tumors or] go on to become dedifferentiated chondrosarcomas. The good news is that the vast majority [of chondrosarcomas] are usually treated effectively with surgical excision. Unfortunately, the more aggressive ones still have a predilection for metastasis and [are associated with] a high mortality rate even with surgery. For these intermediate- to high-grade tumors, very aggressive surgery is accordingly utilized, and sometimes chemotherapy is utilized. With these big, aggressive surgeries, there are associated complications. When an orthopedic oncologist has to use these aggressive interventions, they’re putting the patient at risk for complications.

At the recent 22nd General Meeting of the International Society of Limb Salvage, which [can be described as] a federation of orthopedic oncologists from around the world, several of us met to talk about [whether] we should start building some consensus guidelines from thought leaders and centers around the world. In the grand scheme of things, these are relatively uncommon cancers, so we thought that chondrosarcoma and [its associated] complications would be a good starting point for what [might] become a regular event. I’m not sure [that the meeting] will happen every year, but it will potentially bring together thought leaders from around the world to build consensus about how best to treat either the cancer itself or problems related to the treatment [of this disease].

What are the primary objectives of the 2023 Birmingham Orthopedic Oncology Meeting?

[Day 1 of the meeting] is looking at consensus building around complications related to chondrosarcoma treatment. It’s going to be held in Birmingham, [England,] in January 2024. The lead on this [event] is an internationally famous orthopedic oncologist named Lee Jeys, MB ChB, MSc, FRCS, DSc, [alongside] his colleagues Vineet Kurisunkal and Guy Morris [of the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital]. These 3 individuals will be leading the consensus meeting itself, [which is] sponsored by the International Society of Limb Salvage, the European Musculoskeletal Oncology Society, and the Musculoskeletal Tumor Society [MTS], here, in the United States, and several other organizations. It’s going to be a 2-day meeting. [This meeting] will hopefully work as a platform for us as orthopedic oncologists, in partnership with medical oncologists, to optimize care for these kinds of conditions.

What potential significance will this meeting have within the field of orthopedic oncology?

It’s a very transformative time in orthopedic oncology. [We recently had] the [phase 3] PARITY study [NCT01479283], which was a global study led by Michelle Gert, MD, FRCSC, of McMaster University. [This was a] prospective randomized clinical trial that was blinded [and] assessed antibiotic duration in patients undergoing endoprosthetic reconstruction for bone tumors and bone cancer. [Data from that] study were published in JAMA Oncology this past year.

What’s exciting is the new secondary studies [that] are now published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. I’ll be speaking about some of those studies next month. Suffice to say that the PARITY study came out of a consensus meeting that Dr Gert put forward with the MTS many years ago.

These consensus meetings really do lead to transformations in care and are the way by which we can put together prospective, robust datasets to really answer some profound questions.

Because sarcoma is so relatively rare compared with other types of cancers in adult populations, it requires a global effort to get the necessary [amount of] data that [are often] produced [for] the more common types of cancer, such as breast, lung, and prostate [cancer].

Reference

Birmingham Orthopedic Oncology Meeting: The Consensus. Clockwork Medical. July 6, 2023. Accessed August 3, 2023.https://www.clockworkmedical.com/boom/