Long-term treatment results in soft tissue sarcomas of the thoracic wall treated with pre-or-postoperative radiotherapy--a single institution experience.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the long term results among patients with soft tissue sarcoma of the thoracic wall.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Twenty-six patients who were treated with pre-or postoperative radiotherapy between December 1980-December 2007, with a diagnosis of soft tissue sarcoma of the thoracic wall were retrospectively evaluated.

RESULTS

The median age was 44 years (14-85 years) and 15 of them were male. A total of 50% of patients were grade 3. The most common histologic type of tumor was undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma (26.9%). Tumor size varied between 2-25 cm (median 6.5 cm). Seventeen of the cases had marginal and 9 had wide local resection. Four cases received preoperative radiotherapy and 22 postoperative radiotherapy. Six of the patients with large and high grade tumors received chemotherapy. Median follow-up time was 82 months (9-309 months). Local recurrence and metastasis was detected in 34.6% and 42.3% of patients, respectively. Five- year local control (LC), disease-free survival (DFS), overall survival (OS), and disease-specific survival (DSS) were 62%, 38%, 69%, and 76% respectively. On univariate analysis, the patients with positive surgical margins had a markedly lower 5-year LC rate than patients with negative surgical margin, but the difference was not significant (43% vs 78%, p=0.1). Five-year DFS (66% vs 17%) and DSS (92% vs 60%) rates were significantly worse for the patients who had high grade tumors (p=0.01, p=0.008 respectively).

CONCLUSIONS

Tumor grade and surgical margin are essential parameters for determining the prognosis of thoracic wall soft tissue sarcoma both in our series and the literature.