Status of Surgical Margins and Prognosis in Adult Soft Tissue Sarcomas of the Extremities: A Series of Patients Treated at a Single Institution

Abstract

Positive surgical margins had a weak adverse prognostic effect, which was more pronounced for those patients escaping an early relapse. This would seem to justify a policy of surgical adequacy in adult soft tissue sarcomas, though clinical decision making in borderline presentations for conservative surgery might be reasonably flexible and shared with the patient. Once a local relapse has occurred, the impact of local treatments seems more critical.