Up to 70% of patients with cancer will develop spine metastasis. Clinical presentations vary but pain, instability, and neurologic deficit alone or in combination are usually manifested. Management options include analgesia, hormono-therapy, chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. Treatment decision making is difficult and controversial. Several scoring systems or classifications have been developed over the past 2 decades to help guide physicians in making the right treatment choices for their patients. Realization has also occurred that optimizing the patient's HRQOL (health-related quality of life) is the principle goal of the care provider. Recent therapeutic advances for spine metastases have expanded the physicians' armamentarium to treat these patients. The next challenge is determining when to use these interventions, their outcomes with respect to HRQOL, and where they stand in relation to more conventional forms of treatment.

We invite colleagues to submit their original work to provide best evidence for the management of spine metastases and evaluation of patient HRQOL. It is the goal of this issue to provide the most up to date, evidence-based guideline for the management of patients with spine metastases. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Multidisciplinary approach to the oncologic patient with spine metastasis
• Radiosurgery in spine metastases
• Role of selective arterial embolization in the treatment of spine metastasis
• Systematic review of the published scoring systems
• A new paradigm for the management of spine metastases
• Indications for vertebroplasty/kyphoplasty in spine metastasis
• Surgical treatment in cervical spine metastasis, indications and techniques
• Surgical treatment in thoracolumbar spine metastasis, indications and techniques
• Minimal invasive surgery as a new tool to improve patient QOL
• Limits, complications, tips, and tricks of surgical treatment

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijso/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: