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Can Osteosarcoma Be Prevented?
The risk of many adult cancers can be reduced with certain lifestyle changes (such as staying at a healthy weight or quitting smoking), but at this time there are no known ways to prevent osteosarcoma.
Most known risk factors for osteosarcoma (age, height, race, sex, and certain bone diseases and inherited conditions) cannot be changed. Other than exposure to radiation (usually during radiation therapy), there are no known lifestyle-related or environmental causes of osteosarcoma, so at this time there is no known way to protect against or prevent most of these cancers.
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The American Cancer Society medical and editorial content team
Our team is made up of doctors and oncology certified nurses with deep knowledge of cancer care as well as editors and translators with extensive experience in medical writing.
Anderson ME, Dubois SG, Gebhart MC. Chapter 89: Sarcomas of bone. In: Niederhuber JE, Armitage JO, Doroshow JH, Kastan MB, Tepper JE, eds. Abeloff’s Clinical Oncology. 6th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Elsevier; 2020.
Gorlick R, Janeway K, Marina N. Chapter 34: Osteosarcoma. In: Pizzo PA, Poplack DG, eds. Principles and Practice of Pediatric Oncology. 7th ed. Philadelphia Pa: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2016.
Wang LL, Gebhardt MC, Rainusso N. Osteosarcoma: Epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical presentation, diagnosis, and histology. UpToDate. Accessed at www.uptodate.com/contents/osteosarcoma-epidemiology-pathogenesis-clinical-presentation-diagnosis-and-histology on July 27, 2020.
Last Revised: October 8, 2020
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