<P> 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 . Although the majority of patients experience complete or partial relief of pain following radiation therapy, the effect is not immediate and has been shown in some studies to be transient in more than half of patients . For patients who are not eligible or do not respond to traditional therapies (i.e. radiation therapy, chemotherapy, palliative surgery, bisphosphonates or analgesic medications), thermal ablation techniques have been explored as alternatives for pain reduction . 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 . 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 . More recently, cryoablation has also been explored as a potentially effective alternative as the area of destruction created by this technique can be monitored more effectively by CT than RFA, a potential advantage when treating tumors adjacent to critical structures . </P> <P> The outlook depends on the type of tumor . The outcome is expected to be good for people with noncancerous (benign) tumors, although some types of benign tumors may eventually become cancerous (malignant). With malignant bone tumors that have not spread, most patients achieve a cure, but the cure rate depends on the type of cancer, location, size, and other factors . </P>

A malignant tumor of the bone is called