Background and objective.

Malignant tumors of the hand, although exceptional, often have characteristics that are unique to their particular anatomical location. The optimal treatment for these tumors is controversial: conservative surgery versus amputation.

Our objective was to evaluate lowest recurrence rate, complications after the surgical technique and surgical techniques currently used according to the type of malignant tumor. The question was: which procedure has the lowest recurrence rate for malignant tumors of the hand: conservative surgery or amputation?

Methods.

Systematic review under the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) criteria, only those articles published between 2011-2021, written in the Spanish and English languages and that are free and in full text, were taken into account. The data bases reviewed were: PubMed, SciELO and Google Scholar. To manage biases, the Cochrane tools-RoB 2, ROBINS-I y robvis-were used.

Results.

The adverse effects presented were local recurrence, recurrence, metastatic spread, and flap failure. In turn, the recurrence rate after the application of the surgical technique ranged between the studies from 0 % to 35%.

Conclusions.

The lowest recurrence rate occurred after amputation. When performing conservative surgery, there are greater complications compared to amputation. Conservative techniques are the most used.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )