Modern Diagnostic Methods in Ewing's Sarcoma Family: Six Patients With Histologic Soft Tissue Tumors

Background: Soft tissue tumors often present a major diagnostic challenge for the pathologist. The correct diagnosis has important prognostic and therapeutic consequences. In recent years significant progress has been made in identifying characteristic chromosomal abnormalities associated with certain solid tumors. More than 85% of tumors in the Ewing's sarcoma (ES) family contain a specific t(11;22) (q24;q12) translocation. Methods and Results: We present six patients with a soft tissue tumor of which only four were diagnosed primarily as belonging to the ES family. All cases were further examined by the following methods: immunohistochemistry with MIC2, cytogenetics, nested reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction of the t(11;22), using fresh-frozen or formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded archival material. Conclusions: This method clearly allowed the diagnosis of a tumor of the ES family in all six cases.