Concepts in limb-sparing treatment of adult soft tissue sarcomas

Pretreatment assessment of patients with soft tissue sarcomas of the extremities requires careful attention to a biopsy approach that will establish the precise diagnosis and will not compromise the subsequent definitive operative procedure. Also, staging procedures are required to evaluate the status of both local and distant sites. Limb-sparing surgery for high grade extremity soft tissue sarcomas is a feasible and appropriate approach in approximately 90% of patients with such lesions. Wide gross surgical margins around the sarcoma are the optimal operative approach. Circumstantial evidence is convincing that local treatment failure can be reduced by adjuvant regional radiation treatment when surgical margins are narrow, and end results appear to be equal to those obtained by more extensive surgical resection alone. Adjuvant radiation following operation with optimal gross surgical margins has not been established as adding benefit. Although some groups treating soft tissue sarcomas do use intraarterial chemotherapy in conjunction with these other modalities, there is, as yet, no convincing evidence that this aspect of the multimodality treatment adds to local and/or systemic disease control. The efficacy of adjuvant systemic chemotherapy for high grade soft tissue sarcomas remains to be established within the context of prospective clinical trials.