Soft tissue sarcomas of the extremity and retroperitoneum: advances in management

The treatment of soft tissue sarcomas continues to pose significant challenges. The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in multimodality therapy for these tumors, with a resultant decrease in the number of amputations performed for extremity lesions. Even with combined modality treatment, however, the prognosis remains grim for most patients with retroperitoneal sarcomas, in which delay in diagnosis and tumor proximity to vital structures hinder the chances for cure. Improved protocols for the treatment of retroperitoneal sarcomas must be developed if we are to match the successes achieved with extremity tumors. As efforts to decrease local recurrence of extremity sarcomas have been largely successful, a new challenge to decrease the frequency of systemic metastases has emerged. Although aggressive surgical approaches to recurrent and metastatic sarcomas can result in long-term survival in some cases, better treatments are needed for those patients whose resections fail or those who are not candidates for resection. Combined modality treatments and new modalities, such as adoptive immunotherapy, need to be carefully evaluated in this group of patients. Enormous strides have been made in the treatment of osteogenic sarcomas and some pediatric soft tissue sarcomas. Additional research into basic tumor biology, as well as major intergroup studies of therapy, will be necessary if we are to duplicate those achievements in the more refractory adult soft tissue sarcomas.