Chemotherapy: Does Neoadjuvant or Adjuvant Therapy Improve Outcomes?

Since preoperative chemotherapy has been clearly shown to improve outcomes for patients with Ewing sarcoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, and osteosarcoma, practitioners have attempted to extend the use of adjuvant/neoadjuvant chemotherapy to other types of adult soft tissue sarcoma. Given the high risk of distant recurrence and disease-specific death for patients with soft tissue sarcoma tumors larger than 10 cm, these patients should be considered candidates for neoadjuvant chemotherapy as well as investigational therapies. Yet, potential toxicity from cytotoxic chemotherapy is substantial, and there remains little consensus and wide variation regarding the indications for use of chemotherapy in the adjuvant/neoadjuvant setting.