Analysis of staging and management of patients with sarcoma: a ten-year experience

Over ten years, 70 patients with soft tissue sarcoma were treated for their primary tumors at the hospital of The Fox Chase Cancer Center. The clinical characteristics of these tumors are correlated with the outcome of various management efforts. The results of these evaluations identify three groups that can provide the basis for future treatment decisions and stratification for randomized studies of management options. The first group of patients, those with small well differentiated tumors, have no systemic spread regardless of the treatment modality used. The second group, those with large (greater than 5 cm) tumors that are moderately or poorly differentiated, do uniformly poorly despite the management techniques used. An intermediate group, those with high grade or large size but not both, have outcomes which may be correlated to treatment modalities.