Infant osteosarcoma

Abstract

Abstract Malignant tumours have long been thought to be rare in prehistoric skeletal samples. Numerous recent findings have contradicted this view. Well‐documented cases are of great importance in palaeopathological research. We report a malignant tumour in a medieval skeleton (Sulzburg, southwest Germany) of a child, briefly review palaeopathological research on tumours and include clinical description of the illness. The macroscopic and radiological results leave no doubt about the validity of the diagnosis of osteosarcoma. The osteosarcoma had attacked the proximal femur and extensively invaded the soft tissues. The histological appearance of the tumour is typical of osteosarcoma. Diagnosis, differential diagnoses, the possible aetiology of the tumour and the fate of the afflicted individual are discussed. It is possible that the development of this osteosarcoma was affected by the proximity of the community to a lead‐silver mine. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 15 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.