[Malignant fibrous histiocytoma of the soft tissues]

Clinico-morphological characterization of the malignant fibrous histiocytoma (MFH) of soft tissues in 142 patients is presented. According to the authors' data MFH is the most frequent tumour among soft tissue malignant neoplasms (15,7%) in adult patients. The age of patients is predominantly from 40 to 70, the most frequent site is a lower limb (thigh). A typical morphological variant of MFH clearly dominates (73%): there is a tendency to the development of an inflammatory variant at the retroperitoneal tumour site. Recurrences in all group of patients (104) who were followed-up were in 68,3%, metastasis in 45,2%, the 5-year survival in 59,6% of cases. A clear-cut dependence of these indices upon the depth of tumour location soft tissues, node size, tumour site is noted. In view of pronounced domination of a MFH typical variant the final conclusion on the feasibility of separation of other variants can be only made on the basis of a much greater number of cases.