Minimally Invasive Surgery in Treating Patients With Spinal Tumors

Inclusion Criteria:

• Patients must have a diagnosis of primary, secondary or metastatic spine tumor and be undergoing any posterior spinal fusion with or without anterior fusion anywhere from occiput to sacrum
• Greater than 3 month life expectancy
• Women of child-bearing potential must agree to use adequate contraception (hormonal or barrier method of birth control or abstinence) prior to study entry and for six months following duration of study participation; should a woman become pregnant or suspect that she is pregnant while participating on the trial, she should inform her treating physician immediately
• All subjects must have the ability to understand and the willingness to sign a written informed consent

Exclusion Criteria:

• Patients who are not surgical candidates for spine tumor removal, determined by the surgical team
• Patients who have undergone previous spine surgery for tumor removal will be excluded
• Patients with renal cell carcinoma
• As there is an emphasis on blood loss and length of surgery, the critical variable for homogeneity is the vascularity of the tumor; hypervascular spine tumors are regarded by surgeons as amongst the most challenging of cases; by far the three most common hypervascular metastatic tumors are those arising from renal cell carcinoma, thyroid carcinoma and melanoma; these pathologies are usually regarded as a distinct subset for this reason in the majority of studies; because we rarely encounter the later two pathologies in our practice, we chose to include only the former; however, to further homogenize our study population we will exclude all three of the known hypervascular metastatic spine tumors
• Subjects, who in the opinion of the investigator, may not be able to comply with the safety monitoring requirements of the study