The Unit of General and Thoracic Surgery of the Musculoskeletal System is a part of the 3rd Orthopaedic and Traumatologic Clinic prevalently Oncologic. It includes 2 self-managed beds, 1 weekly operating session, an outpatient clinic (Thursday and Friday mornings) for new referrals and postoperative follow-up of oncologic patients.

Clinical practice

The Unit of General and Thoracic Surgery of the Musculoskeletal System, fulfills scheduled needs of abdominal, thoracic and vascular specialist surgery resulting from recent progresses made in today's orthopaedic and oncologic surgery.
On the basis of the past experience (approximately 800 pulmonary metastases from sarcomas, about 200 thoracic wall tumors, 300 anterior and antero-lateral approaches to the spine), clinical practice involves:

• Removal of lung metastases from bone and soft tissue sarcomas;
• Removal of primary bone and soft tissue sarcomas, recurrences or secondary tumors of the chest wall, neck, retroperitoneum, abdominal wall;
• Removal of chest and abdominal wall neoformations (fibrous dysplasia of the rib, lipomas, aneurysmal bone cysts of the rib, aggressive fibromatosis, elastofibromas etc.);
• It provides specialist surgery to the orthopaedic surgical teams to achieve appropriate cervical, thoracic and abdominal approaches to the spine and pelvis for oncologic surgery, deformities and post-traumatic diseases;
• It performs surgical procedures for stabilization of mobile flaps of the thoracic wall or complex pelvic fractures.
• Horton's arthritis.

Research activity

Research is mainly focuses in the field of surgical treatment of pulmonary metastases from bone or soft tissue sarcomas, especially in cases with multiple relapses.
In particular, a study is underway on the indications and timing for surgery in Ewing's sarcomas and soft tissue sarcomas with pulmonary metastases. Moreover, functional results obtained after wide reconstructions of the thoracic wall with clinical experimentation of new materials and special reconstructive techniques are being analyzed and studied.