Clinical Aspects of Soft-Tissue Tumors

Abstract

Soft-tissue tumors or sarcomas of mesenchymal origin are a challenge to the therapeutic acumen of the surgeon. No tumor appears more innocuous while in the early stages of local growth, and none can be more virulently malignant when developed to the point where distant metastasis is manifest. These tumors are best treated by surgery. However, inadequate surgery at the time of the initial treatment is the principal reason for failure of cure and is the usual clinical history of a patient with sarcoma. With appropriate radical surgical technique, employing the method of incontinuity "en bloc" resection, the local lesion can be permanently eliminated with but few exceptions. If such surgery can be instituted as the initial treatment, it will circumvent distant metastasis in a higher percentage of cases than is now being achieved by repeated inadequate operative treatment. The chance for cure will be lost if one compromises on this