Total spondylectomy in chondrosarcoma arising from the seventh thoracic vertebra.

Total spondylectomy has been performed previously for tumour. In 1966 a complete vertebra (the fourth lumbar) affected by a giant-cell tumour was removed in a two-stage surgical procedure : the body of the vertebra was extirpated two weeks after excision of the posterior parts (Li#{232}vre,Darcy, Pradat, Camus, B#{233}nichou, Attali and Joublin 1968). In 1968, after laminectomy, all remaining parts of three adjacent vertebrae (the eleventh and twelfth thoracic and first lumbar) were removed together with a giant-cell tumour (Stener and Johnsen 1971). Later in the same year the second lumbar vertebra was excised in two patients because of malignant tumour (Hamdi 1969). This paper describes total removal of the seventh and partial removal of the sixth and eighth thoracic vertebrae of a forty-nine-year-old man with a chondrosarcoma arising from the seventh thoracic vertebra.