[Adjuvant chemotherapy of soft tissue sarcoma]

As the adjuvant chemotherapy of osteosarcoma has been proved highly effective, that of soft tissue sarcoma has been expecting. However, there is still some question as to its effectiveness. The indication and methods were studied on literatures and our own cases. A survey of the literature regarding to the chemotherapeutic effect upon advanced soft tissue sarcoma shows response rate ranging 20 to 50 per cent. On the other hand, soft tissue sarcoma has a variety of histological type and malignancy and the sensitivity to chemotherapy varies considerably according to each tissue type. The literatures and our results indicate that most effective sarcoma is rhabdomyosarcoma, which is absolutely advisable to apply adjuvant chemotherapy. The same is the sarcoma with similar histological pattern. As to other type sarcomas, the therapy has to be applied according to their grade, stage, age and the effect of chemotherapy evaluated by advanced tumor. Most prevalent agents used for soft tissue sarcoma are adriamycin, cyclophosphamide, actinomycin-D, vincristine and DTIC. These agents usually used as combination called VAC, CYVADACT, CYVADIC, BCD.