title: Feasibility of limb salvage and survival in soft tissue sarcomas.
abstract: 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.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000671:Amputation, Surgical / Q000379:methods*; D003131:Combined Modality Therapy; D005121:Extremities / Q000601:surgery*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009364:Neoplasm Recurrence, Local; D012509:Sarcoma / Q000401:mortality / Q000601:surgery*; D012983:Soft Tissue Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality / Q000601:surgery*