Can Navigation Improve the Ability to Achieve Tumor-free Margins in Pelvic and Sacral Primary Bone Sarcoma Resections? A Historically Controlled Study

Anatomic and surgical complexity make pelvic and sacral bone sarcoma resections challenging. Positive surgical margins are more likely to occur in patients with pelvic and sacral bone sarcomas than in those with extremity sarcomas and are associated with an increased likelihood of local recurrence. Intraoperative navigation techniques have been proposed to improve surgical accuracy in achieving negative margins, but available evidence is limited to experimental (laboratory) studies and small patient series. Only one small historically controlled study is available. Because we have experience with both approaches, we wanted to assess whether navigation improves our ability to achieve negative resection margins.