This is a prospective, cross sectional, human use study conducted using patients with bone metastases requiring orthopaedic stabilization. Though this is an observational study, blood sampling, the SF-36 questionnaire, and ECOG performance status, and correlative studies will be performed.

The patient be asked to fill out a questionnaire. The questionnaire asks about their quality of life and will take approximately 15 minutes to complete. It will be completed at a regularly scheduled clinic visit.

At the scheduled pre-operative testing, an extra sample of your blood (equal to about 4 teaspoons) will be collected for research tests. The research tests will measure levels of inflammation in your body. These tests are not part of routine care. A physical examination of the operative site will be done by the Orthopaedic Surgeon. The patient will complete the same questionnaire at the regularly scheduled three and six month follow-up visit

Whether the addition of serum inflammatory cytokines improves the robustness of an existing, validated Bayesian Belief network trained to estimate survival in human patients with operative skeletal metastases.

Whether the addition of chemokine analysis improves the robustness of an existing, validated Bayesian Belief network trained to estimate survival in human patients with operative skeletal metastases.