Soft-tissue sarcoma exposed
Scientists at the UC Davis Cancer Center have reported that they have exposed a very rare type of cancer — soft-tissue sarcoma, which is deadly for some patients. It’s been shown that exploring the cancer thoroughly — knowing its size, site, grade and depth is of huge importance for doctors to be able to determine the treatment procedure.
“Soft-tissue sarcomas have been lumped together in the past because they are rare, yet they are still a very heterogeneous group of diseases,” said Robert Canter, who led the research. “Our work shows that in order to improve outcomes we need to think of and treat sarcomas as distinct rather than as just one disease.”
In order to gather as much valuable data as possible, scientists followed over two thousand patients with low-grade soft-tissue sarcoma. They have come to the conclusion that the most prominent patterns of recurrence and death were predicted by tumor site. Patients with small tumors located in an extremity and easily removed with surgery experienced longer term survival. About nine percent of patients, usually those with large tumors in the abdomen, had the worst outcomes, sometimes with recurrences many years after the initial operation.
“The large number of patients in our study made it possible for us to look at the small percentage of patients with low-grade sarcoma who didn’t do very well,” said Canter. “We clearly need to develop more aggressive treatment and long-term follow-up options for patients with certain types of sarcomas.”
After that, scientists did a second study. They followed around 200 patients with an aggressive form of soft-tissue sarcoma, and they’ve constructed a tool that can be used to predict three- to five-year survival based on pre-operative variables.
“Tumor size has consistently been considered a predictor of worse survival, but tumor size alone is not enough to determine the best treatment protocol for every patient. The tool we devised takes into account additional risk factors,” said Canter.
These studies will be the base for future research of soft-tissue sarcomas.
The studies were published in Annals of Surgical Oncology and Clinical Cancer Research, respectively. The whole project was funded by the National Institute of Health.
Source: ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
