Surgery

Surgical resection is the mainstay of therapy for soft tissue sarcomas.

In some small low-grade tumors of the extremities or trunk, surgery alone can be performed without the use of radiation. Evidence for this approach is limited to single-institution, relatively small case series [3-5] or analysis of outcomes in the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program tumor registry.[6] These comparisons suffer from low statistical power and differential evaluability rates that could have introduced bias.[3]

Patient selection factors may vary among surgeons. In general, surgery alone is considered in patients with low-grade tumors of the extremity or superficial trunk that are 5 cm or smaller in diameter (T1) and have microscopically negative surgical margins. In these patients, the rate of long-term local tumor control is about 90%.[7]