Radiotherapy of Soft Tissue Sarcomas

Abstract

This review series comprises 245 patients with soft tissue sarcomas of various sites and histologic types observed at this Institute between 1928 and 1966. 132 patients were men (54.2%) and 113 women (45.8%). Fibrosarcomas accounted for the largest number of cases (161 cases - 65.5%), followed by undifferentiated sarcomas (36 cases). Other histologic types accounted for a smaller number of cases. As to the site of the primary tumor, the lower limbs accounted for 32.2% and the abdomen for 26.5% of the cases. 152 of the 245 patients attended for the first time and 93 presented recurrences of the tumor sometime after receiving surgical treatment and/or radiotherapy elsewhere. 159/245 cases were subjected at this Institute to designedly radical surgery followed by postoperative radiotherapy by various techniques. In the remaining 86 cases, in which surgery was either not indicated or not possible because of the patients’ local or general condition, radiotherapy only was given, where possible curative. Radium was used in 97 cases almost always as complementary treatment in superficial tumors that had developed mainly towards the surface and been removed surgically either radically or as radically as conditions allowed. The therapeutic techniques and results are discussed in relation to patient survival by histologic type and to failures and recurrences.