osteosarcoma of the jaws: a retrospective study

osteosarcoma is a primary malignant tumor of bone, which can involve jaws. this article reviews osteosarcoma of the jaws referred to the department of oral pathology, dental faculty of tehran university of medical sicences and pathology department of cancer institiute in imam khomeini hospital during 30 years from 1349 to 1378 and also reviews jaw osteosarcoma in english literature. the purpose of this review is comparing the clinical behaviour of jaw tumors with osteosarcoma from elsewhere in the body and reporting the observations of clinical, histological and diagnostic findings. for this retrospective review the clinical, radiographic and histopathologic records of 42 patients were obtained, furthermore follow up results were also obtained from patients records. the mean age of patients was 35 years (range 9 to 61 years) with slight male predilection. the most common presenting features were swelling, pain and ulcer. histologically, the lesions ranged from well-differentiated tumors with prominent osteoid formation to poorly differentiated tumors, which had bizarre cells and numerous mitosis especially atypical ones. most of the lesions had areas of chondroid formation, but all of tumors showed neoplastic osteiod, of course in different degrees. the most important problem after treatment was local recurrence. primary osteosarcomas of the jaws are a group of lesions, which are biologically distinct from long bones osteosarcoma and have better behaviour than them. more accurate determination of their clinical behaviour and their management will depend on complete follow up of patients and actual records of patients’ data.