Cancers and Tumors
Bone and Soft Tissue Tumors Symptoms and Diagnosis
Symptoms of Bone Tumors and Soft Tissue Tumors
Symptoms of bone and soft tissue tumors can be hard to identify and assess. It's important for your child to see a doctor if you notice a physical change, such as a lump, or if you child complains of pain. In general:
- Pain is the most common symptom of bone tumors. It is common for a child who has a malignant bone tumor to complain about pain for a month or two before seeing a doctor. Finding malignant bone tumors early is very important because early treatment is more likely to be successful.
- The most common symptom of soft tissue tumors is the appearance of a soft tissue mass. Often, soft tissue tumors do not cause any pain.
Bone and Soft Tissue Tumors Diagnosis
How we diagnose your child depends on what we find out as we explore their condition.
In nine out of 10 children, we can see and evaluate benign bone tumors by taking an X-ray of the bone.
This lesion in a 16-year old boy involving the elbow joint is hard to see on conventional radiographs but readily imaged by MRI (red arrow).
If an X-ray does not provide enough information about a tumor, whether it is in bone or in soft tissue, we may ask your child to have more extensive imaging tests, starting with an
MRI (magnetic resonance imaging)
If we suspect your child may have a malignant bone tumor, we may also ask for:
CT (computed tomography) scan
of the lungs to make sure tumors have not spread there
(positron emission tomography) to help us judge how the tumor is growing.
If these imaging tests suggest that the tumor may be cancer, we will ask your child to have a tumor
. In the hospital, a doctor will remove a small piece of the tumor and examine it under a microscope for signs of cancer.