A Clinical Study of Soft Tissue Tumors in Orthopedic Field

Park, Heui Jeon; Park, Byeong Mun; Kwon, Soon Won; Kang, Eung Shick

Abstract

Soft tissues, which are wide spread in body, are derived from a common primitive mesenchyme and the tumors are arising from them tend to closely resemble the prototype tissues in varying degree. Some soft tissue tumors have benign course, which can be cured by local excision and the others have malignant course being resistant to therapy and resulting in recurrence or metastasis to other organs or tissues. The authors reviewed 241 cases of soft tissue tumors which had been received treatment at Department of Orthopedic Surgery in Severance Hospital, Yonsei University College of Medicine from January 1972 to December 1981. The results were obtained as follows: l. Among 241 cases of soft tissue tumors, 202 (83.8%) were benign and 39 (16.2%) were malignant. 2. The most common benign tumor was lipoma (68.7%) which was followed by hemangioma (8.4%), neurofibroma (6.4%) and schwannoma (5.0%) in decreasing order of incidence. Among malignant tumors, fibrosarcoma (35.9%) and rhabdomyosarcoma (33.3%) were the two most common ones, liposarcom (12.8%) and Kaposi's sarcoma (7.7%) being the next common group of tumors. 3. There was no apparent sex preference in benign soft tissue tumors, but in malignant tumors, male was affected about 3 times more common than female. 4. There was no predilection sites in benign tumors, which in malignant tumors, lower extremity was predominant site of occurence. 5. Metastasis of the malignant tumors was taken placed 13 cases (33.3%) at the time of admission, and the lung was the most common frequent site of metastasis. 6. Most of the benign tumors were treated by local excision, and malignant tumors were treated by wide excision with combination of chemotherapy and/or irradiation. 7. Local recurrence of benign tumors was developed in 12 (5.9%) out of 202 cases. 8. Among 19 cases, on follow up examination had been made, 13 survived more than 1 year and 2 cases longer than 5 years after surgery.