Of 229 patients with primary Ewing's sarcoma of bone, thirty-seven
survived five years or longer. When the patients who survived five years or
longer were compared with the 192 who did not, two factors associated with
longer survival were identified in this retrospective study: location of
the primary tumor within an extremity and inclusion of surgery as part of
the initial treatment. The probability of five-year survival for all 229
patients with primary Ewing's sarcoma was 16 per cent. For those seen since
1950, this probability was 18 per cent, and for patients without
metastasis, it was 22 per cent.