[4] Average five-year survival in the United States after being diagnosed with bone and joint cancer is 67%.

Common benign bone tumors may be neoplastic, developmental, traumatic, infectious, or inflammatory in etiology.

The most common locations for many primary tumors, both benign and malignant include the distal femur and proximal tibia (around the knee joint).

While malignant fibrous histiocytoma (MFH) - now generally called "pleomorphic undifferentiated sarcoma" - primary in bone is known to occur occasionally,[9] current paradigms tend to consider MFH a wastebasket diagnosis, and the current trend is toward using specialized studies (i.e. genetic and immunohistochemical tests) to classify these undifferentiated tumors into other tumor classes.

[10] Germ cell tumors, including teratoma, often present and originate in the midline of the sacrum, coccyx, or both.

[11] Secondary bone tumors are metastatic lesions which have spread from other organs, most commonly carcinomas of the breast, lung, and prostate.

[2] Additional symptoms may include fatigue, fever, weight loss, anemia and nausea.

[2] Where available, people with bone tumors are treated at a specialist centre which have surgeons, radiologists, pathologists, oncologists and other support staff.

[1] Generally, noncancerous bone tumors may be observed for changes and surgery offered if there is pain or pressure effects on neighbouring body parts.

[citation needed] There are other joint preservation surgical reconstruction options, including allograft, tumor-devitalized autograft, vascularized fibula graft, distraction osteogenesis, and custom-made implants.

[19] Over the past two decades, CT guided radiofrequency ablation has emerged as a less invasive alternative to surgical resection in the care of benign bone tumors, most notably osteoid osteomas.

Since the procedure was first introduced for the treatment of osteoid osteomas in the early 1990s,[20] it has been shown in numerous studies to be less invasive and expensive, to result in less bone destruction and to have equivalent safety and efficacy to surgical techniques, with 66 to 96% of patients reporting freedom from symptoms.

[24] Thermal ablation techniques are also increasingly being used in the palliative treatment of painful metastatic bone disease.

Currently, external beam radiation therapy is the standard of care for patients with localized bone pain due to metastatic disease.

Several multi-center clinical trials studying the efficacy of RFA in the treatment of moderate to severe pain in patients with metastatic bone disease have shown significant decreases in patient reported pain after treatment.

[26][27] These studies are limited however to patients with one or two metastatic sites; pain from multiple tumors can be difficult to localize for directed therapy.