Unusual presentation hides the diagnosis of soft tissue sarcomas

Abstract

Shamim Sultan Sheikh, Nandini Jatin Desai

Soft tissue sarcomas are always challenging lesions. This study is aimed to stress on unusual presentation of sarcoma patients that may cause significant delay in the diagnosis to provide appropriate therapy. Two subsets of cases were studied: (A) 50 cases of abscess forming mass in the body (prospective) (B) 40 cases of soft tissue sarcomas studied for the clinical presentation (retrospective). Among 50 cases of group A that presented with abscess on FNAC 8 cases had sarcomatous cytology. Clinical presentation of soft tissue sarcoma were studied retrospectively of 40 cases, among which 8 were presented as abscess, 2 were as chronic large hematoma without history of trauma and the most common presentation was as painless slowly growing mass i.e. among 30 cases. Among the cases presented with abscess (group A) 16% of cases were diagnosed as soft tissue sarcoma. 20% of cases of soft tissue sarcoma (group B) presented with abscess formation and 5% of cases with chronic large hematoma without history of trauma.