Surface tumours of bone

Surface tumours of bone may be a cause of confusion and diagnostic difficulty. Confusion may arise from the several descriptive adjectives used – parosteal, periosteal and juxtacortical. Diagnostic difficulties may arise from the lack of awareness of less common entities, insufficient biopsy sampling and a failure to understand the precise relationship of a lesion and the bone surface. In this review we define and classify the important lesions and indicate imaging, macroscopic and microscopic features which are useful for diagnosis.