These frequent fractures of weakened bone disrupt childhood and can interfere with normal activities. In the past, when this type of bone tumor was discovered in a patient, the cyst was opened with a large incision, the inside of the cyst was scraped out and the cyst cavity was filled with donated bone or bone from the patient's pelvis. Even with this invasive surgery, the cysts sometimes reoccurred. In the 1970s and 1980s, a technique from Italy was popularized which requires only a needle puncture into this fluid-filled tumor. The fluid is withdrawn and steroid medication is injected.
Steroids are a family of drugs that our bodies normally produce in small amounts.
Steroids can be artificially manufactured and are widely used as a treatment for various diseases. The injections of steroid medication into the cyst greatly improved the treatment of the simple bone cysts, but it is not universally successful and often requires multiple injections of the drug. These multiple injections necessitate a general anesthesia be administered to the child each time the medication is given. In 1992, this author and her colleagues at the Intermountain Shriners Hospital in Salt Lake City began to utilize a similar treatment method but instead of injecting steroid into the cyst, they injected the tumor with the patient's own bone marrow. After the cyst fluid was withdrawn, bone marrow was taken from the patient's pelvis with a needle and injected into the cyst cavity.