Presentation and management of soft tissue sarcomas

ABSTRACT

Soft tissue sarcomas [STSs] are uncommon malignancies and may occur at any age, arise at any site and from any of the extraskeletal mesodermal tissues. From September 1st, 1991 to December 31st, 1995, 73 patients with STSs were presented. The age ranged from 2 to 77 years [mean age 37.4 years] with male to female ratio of 0.971. The cardinal presenting symptoms were painless mass [57.1%], painful mass [15.1%] and limb disability [7.6%]. Extremity sarcomas represented 50.7% and non-extremity sarcomas 49.3%. The commonest histopathological subtypes were fibrosarcoma [17.8%], rhabdomyosarcoma [16.4%] and malignant vascular tumors [12.3%]. The management of patients included biopsy and radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy [15.1%], marginal resection with postoperative adjuvant therapy [35.6%], wide local resection with or without adjuvant therapy [46.6%] and amputation [2.7%]. Follow up for a period ranged from 6 to 52 months [mean duration of 20.7 months] showed that local recurrence accounted for 35.5%, distant metastases [21.9%], tumor-related death [28.7%], loss at follow up [15.1%] and disease-free survival [56.2%]. The aim of this study is to review the clinicopathological features, management and early results of the cases as compared to that of the literature