What is it about ?
Sarcomas are malignant tumors that can develop in tissue and bone. They come from connective tissue or supporting tissue. Tissue sarcomas are found in soft tissues: connective tissue, nervous tissue, muscles, fat, blood vessels, joint capsules, etc. Osteosarcomas are found in bones and cartilage. They can spread through the blood, usually to the lungs, sometimes to the lymph nodes.
What is their frequency?
Fortunately, the presence of sarcomas is a rare thing. Soft tissue sarcomas account for about 1% of all malignant tumors.
How to recognize them?
At first, sarcomas do not cause symptoms, and if there are, they are not very numerous.
Osteosarcomas, on the other hand, cause pain, swelling and a feeling of heat on the skin above the tumor. If they are located near a joint, the person may lose mobility.
Soft tissue sarcomas often go without symptoms. Half of them are lodged in the limbs, the other half in the trunk, head or neck. A growing mass (lump) attached to the underlying tissue that is hard to palpation and exceeds 5 cm should be considered suspicious.
Cough bloody mucus and one shortness of breath may indicate the presence of metastases in the lungs.
How is the diagnosis made?
The doctor will suspect the diagnosis based on the symptoms and physical examination. An x-ray and a CT scan will usually confirm the tissue or bone damage. The suspicion must always be confirmed by a biopsy: this rapid intervention consists in taking a small piece of tissue for analysis in the laboratory.
What can your doctor do?
The treatment will always take place in the hospital, in a specialized department. For the osteosarcomas, it will usually be a combination of chemotherapy, radiotherapy. Chemotherapy reduces the size of the tumor so that it can be excised (= remove it). Radiotherapy helps prevent a possible relapse or delay it.
Soft tissue sarcomas are surgically excised, with a wide margin, i.e. also remove 4 to 6 cm of healthy tissue around the tumor. If this is not possible, we start a radiotherapy. Chemotherapy is reserved for patients with metastases.
Regular
Initially, we especially insist on rehabilitation, if necessary with adapted prostheses and / or other assistive devices.
In order to quickly detect any relapses and metastases, patients with sarcomas are followed long after treatment: every 3 to 6 months for the first 5 years, every 12 months for the following 5 years. About 50 to 80% of patients do not have symptoms after 5 years.
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