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Feasibility of limb salvage and survival in soft tissue sarcomas
Author(s) -
Karakousis Constantine P.,
Emrich Lawrence J.,
Rao Uma,
Krishnamsetty Ramachandra M.
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
cancer
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.052
H-Index - 304
eISSN - 1097-0142
pISSN - 0008-543X
DOI - 10.1002/1097-0142(19860201)57:3<484::aid-cncr2820570314>3.0.co;2-k
Subject(s) - medicine , amputation , soft tissue , surgery , survival rate , radiation therapy , soft tissue sarcoma
One hundred nine consecutive patients with soft tissue sarcomas were treated in the period 1977 through 1983. Of 85 patients with extremity sarcomas, only 3 patients (4%) were managed with amputation, whereas in the previous decade, 40% of such patients were treated with amputation in our institute. The current 5‐year survival rate is 63%; in the previous decade it was 45%. In the current series, for extremity locations, patients with minimum surgical margins of 2 cm or greater and no further local therapy had a 5‐year local recurrence rate of 17%, whereas those with minimum surgical margins of less than 2 cm and who were treated with adjuvant postoperative radiation had a local recurrence rate of 7%. In the previous period, the local recurrence rate was 30% after wide resection and 66.6% after local excision. With a combination of modalities, limb salvage can be practiced currently in the majority of patients with extremity soft tissue sarcomas without any adverse effect on recurrence rates and survival.