BackgroundIn the Ponseti treatment of idiopathic clubfoot, children are generally provided with a standard foot abduction orthosis (FAO). A significant proportion of these patients experience irresolvable problems with the FAO leading to therapeutic non-compliance and eventual relapse. Accordingly, these patients were equipped with a unilateral lower leg orthosis (LLO) developed in our institution. The goal of this retrospective study was to determine compliance with and the efficacy of the LLO as an alternative treatment measure. The minimum follow-up was 5 years.ResultsA total of 45 patients (75 ft) were retrospectively registered and included in the study. Compliance with the bracing protocol was 91% with the LLO and 46% with the FAO. The most common problems with the FAO were sleep disturbance (50%) and cutaneous problems (45%). Nine percent of patients experienced sleep disturbance, and no cutaneous problems occurred with the LLO. Thirteen percent of patients being treated with an FAO until the age of four (23 patients; 40 ft) underwent surgery because of relapse, defined by rigid recurrence of any of the components of a clubfoot. Fourteen percent of patients being treated with an LLO (22 patients; 35 ft), mostly following initial treatment with an FAO, experienced recurrence.ConclusionChanging from FAO to LLO at any point during treatment did not result in an increased rate of surgery and caused few problems.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12891-018-2160-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Purpose Desmoid tumours of the extremity have a high recurrence rate. The purpose of this study was to analyse the outcome after resection of these tumours with special emphasis on recurrent disease and adjuvant therapeutic strategies. Methods In this retrospective study we evaluated prognostic factors for recurrence-free survival after surgical treatment of desmoid tumours of the extremity in 27 patients with an average age of 41 years treated from 1997 to 2009. Adjuvant radiotherapy (50-60 Gy) was given in five cases with primary and in nine patients with recurrent disease. The average follow-up was 64 months. Results The five-year recurrence-free survival in patients with primary disease was 33 %. Patients with negative resection margins tended to have a better outcome than patients with positive resection margins, but the difference between both groups was not significant (56 vs 14 %, p=0.145). In patients with positive margins, adjuvant radiotherapy did not significantly improve recurrence-free survival (40 vs 14 %, p=0.523). Patients with local recurrence had a five-year further recurrencefree survival of 47 %. In those patients further recurrence-free survival was significantly better after adjuvant radiation (89 vs 25 %, p=0.015). Two thirds of all patients suffered moderate or severe complications due to the treatment regimen. Conclusions Compared to desmoids of the trunk or the head and neck region, desmoids affecting the limbs show by far the worst outcome in terms of relapse or treatment-related morbidity. The importance of negative resection margins is still not clear. Particularly in recurrent desmoids adjuvant radiotherapy appears to reduce the further recurrence rate. Therefore, a general use of radiation should be considered for this high-risk group.

Among human neoplasms, primary malignant bone tumors are fairly rare. They present an incidence rate of roughly 10 cases per 1 million inhabitants per year. During childhood (<15 years), the percentage of malignant bone tumors amounts to 6% of all infantile malignancies. Only leukemia and lymphoma show a higher incidence in adolescence. Of all primary malignant bone tumors, 60% affect patients younger than 45 years and the peak incidence of all bone tumors occurs between 15 and 19 years. The most common primary malignant bone tumors are osteosarcoma (35%), chondrosarcoma (25%), and Ewing's sarcoma (16%). Less frequently (≤ 5%) occurring tumors are chordoma, malignant fibrous histiocytoma of bone, and fibrosarcoma of bone. Vascular primary malignant tumors of bone and adamantinoma are very rare. Staging of the lesion is essential for systemic therapeutic decision-making and includes complete imaging and histo-pathological confirmation of the suspected entity. In most cases, this is established by open- or image-guided biopsy. Based on this information, an interdisciplinary tumor board will determine the individual therapeutic approach. Endoprosthetic or biological reconstruction following wide tumor resection is the most common surgical therapy for primary malignant bone tumors. There is vital importance in a thorough postoperative follow-up and continous after-care by a competent tumor center which is permanentely in charge of therapy.

Level IV-this is a case report.

Background/Aim: Ewing sarcoma is a highly malignant tumour predominantly found in children. The radiological signs of this malignancy can be mistaken for acute osteomyelitis. These entities require profoundly different treatments and result in completely different prognoses. The purpose of this study was to develop an artificial intelligence algorithm, which can determine imaging features in a common radiograph to distinguish osteomyelitis from Ewing sarcoma. Materials and Methods: A total of 182 radiographs from our Sarcoma Centre (118 healthy, 44 Ewing, 20 osteomyelitis) from 58 different paediatric (≤18 years) patients were collected. All localisations were taken into consideration. Cases of acute, acute on chronic osteomyelitis and intraosseous Ewing sarcoma were included. Chronic osteomyelitis, extra-skeletal Ewing sarcoma, malignant small cell tumour and soft tissue-based primitive neuroectodermal tumours were excluded. The algorithm development was split into two phases and two different classifiers were built and combined with a Transfer Learning approach to cope with the very limited amount of data. In phase 1, pathological findings were differentiated from healthy findings. In phase 2, osteomyelitis was distinguished from Ewing sarcoma. Data augmentation and median frequency balancing were implemented. A data split of 70%, 15%, 15% for training, validation and hold-out testing was applied, respectively. Results: The algorithm achieved an accuracy of 94.4% on validation and 90.6% on test data in phase 1. In phase 2, an accuracy of 90.3% on validation and 86.7% on test data was achieved. Grad-CAM results revealed regions, which were significant for the algorithms decision making. Conclusion: Our AI algorithm can become a valuable support for any physician involved in treating musculoskeletal lesions to support the diagnostic process of detection and differentiation of osteomyelitis from Ewing sarcoma. Through a Transfer Learning approach, the algorithm was able to cope with very limited data. However, a systematic and structured data acquisition is necessary to further develop the algorithm and increase results to clinical relevance.

Background There is no universally accepted treatment standard for idiopathic toe walking patients (ITW) in the current literature. None of the established methods provide homogenous satisfying results. In our department we treat ITW patients with lower leg orthoses with a circular foot unit for a total of 16 weeks. In this study we reviewed our database to evaluate the success of our treatment protocol for a 24 months follow up period. Results Twenty-two patients were included in this study. Age at the beginning of treatment was 7.0 years +/− 2.9 (range 2.5-13.1). Percentage of ITW at the beginning of treatment according to the perception of the parents was 89% +/− 22.2 (range 50-100). Immediately after the treatment with our device, percentage of ITW dropped to 11% +/− 13.2 (range 0-50). After 12 months, 73% of the patients (16/22) walked completely normal or showed ITW less than 10% of the day. After 24 months, 64% of the patients kept a normal gait (14/22). Conclusion This study provides evidence that the treatment of idiopathic toe walking with lower leg orthoses with a circular foot unit results in satisfying long-term results in two thirds of the patients.

Zusammenfassung Einleitung: Die bisher in Deutschland durchgeführten Studien bezüglich der Versorgungssituation von Patienten mit osteoporotischer Fraktur beruhen zumeist auf Krankenkassendaten. Es werden daher nur diagnostizierte Erkrankungen erfasst. Ziel der Studie war es, die Dunkelziffer an nicht Osteoporose diagnostizierten Patienten zu erfassen, und die Einleitung von Diagnostik und Therapie nach Fragilitätsfrakturen im Allgemeinen und unter dem Einfluss von Risikofaktoren zu analysieren. Material und Methode: In einer retrospektiven Beobachtungsstudie an orthopädischen und unfallchirurgischen Abteilungen im Rhein-Main-Gebiet wurde eine Analyse der versorgten Frakturen durchgeführt. Eingeschlossen wurden Patienten im Alter von > 50 Jahren mit einer ICD verschlüsselten Fraktur als Aufnahmediagnose. Die in der Krankenakte enthaltenden Daten wurden nach prävalenten Frakturen, nach für den Knochen-Stoffwechsel und für die Knochen-Stabilität relevanten Grunderkrankungen, einer vorbekannten Osteoporose, durchgeführter Diagnostik zur Sicherung oder Widerlegung der Diagnose einer Osteoporose, der Diagnosestellung einer Osteoporose und ggf. erfolgter Therapieeinleitung und – empfehlung nach einem vorliegenden Erhebungsbogen systematisch ausgewertet. Ergebnisse: Insgesamt wurden 2142 Patienten älter als 50 Jahre mit einer Fraktur ausgewertet. 1544 (72,1 %) waren weiblich und 598 (27,9 %) männlich. Davon wurde bei 1460 (68,2 %) der Patienten die Fraktur als osteoporotisch eingestuft. 80,3 % der Patienten mit osteoporotischer Fraktur waren älter als 70 Jahre. Die Hüftfraktur (55,2 %) war die häufigste Frakturlokalisation, gefolgt von der Wirbelkörperfraktur (14 %). Eine prävalente Fraktur gaben 14 % in der Anamnese an. Insgesamt nur bei 29,9 % der Patienten wurde eine Osteoporose als Ursache der Fraktur diagnostiziert. Bei 67,2 % der osteoporotischen Wirbelkörperfrakturen wurde die Osteoporose erkannt, jedoch nur bei 16,3 % der osteoporotischen Hüftfrakturen. Zum Zeitpunkt der Entlassung wurden 6,6 % der Patienten mit einem antiosteoporotischen Medikament therapiert und bei 5,1 % wurde diesbezüglich eine Empfehlung im Entlassungsbrief ausgesprochen. Die Ergebnisse dieser Studie zeigen, dass bei 70 % der Patienten die Diagnosestellung einer Osteoporose versäumt und dass 88,3 % der Patienten ohne eine spezifische antiosteoporotische Therapie oder einer Therapieempfehlung aus dem Krankenhaus entlassen wurden. Zusammenfassung: Somit zeigt sich eine deutliche Versorgungslücke zwischen evidenzbasierter Medizin und alltäglicher Praxis. Frakturen bei älteren Menschen führen selten zur einer Diagnostik oder Therapie bezüglich Osteoporose. Angesichts der hohen Prävalenz der Osteoporose und der Zunahme der Inzidenz osteoporotischer Frakturen sind Konzepte zur besseren Versorgung gerade dieser Hochrisikopatienten notwendig. Die international zunehmende Etablierung von Fracture Liaison Services (FLS) zeigt in Untersuchungen, dass ein solches Konzept effektiv ist, um ein optimales Osteoporose-Management nach einer Fragilitätsfraktur zu erreichen und sekundäre Frakturen zu verhindern.

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