Management of sinonasal chondrosarcoma: A systematic review of 161 patients

Background: This study reviews the published literature related to management of sinonasal chondrosarcoma. Clinical presentation, demographics, radiographic diagnosis, treatment, and management outcomes of this uncommon disease are reported. Methods: A systematic review of studies for sinonasal chondrosarcoma from 1950 to 2012 was conducted. A PubMed search for articles related to this condition, along with bibliographies of the selected articles was performed. Articles were examined for patient data that reported survivability. Demographic data, disease site, treatment strategies, follow-up, outcome, and survival were analyzed. Results: A total of 63 journal articles were included, comprising a total of 161 cases of sinonasal chondrosarcoma. The average follow-up was 77.4 months (range, 1 to 325.2 months). Surgical resection was the most common treatment modality, used in 72.0% of cases. A combination of surgery and radiation therapy was the second most commonly used treatment modality, used in 21.7% of cases. Conclusion: This review contains the largest pool of sinonasal chondrosarcoma patients to date and suggests aggressive surgical resection is the most common treatment modality for this condition. The use of adjuvant radiotherapy for prevention of local recurrence after subtotal or total resection has not been proven effective. However, the use of radiotherapy in addition to surgical resection has shown benefit in some studies in terms of survival.