Clinical Treatment for Pulmonary Artery Sarcoma

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Objective: Pulmonary artery sarcomas are exceedingly rare and the prognosis for patients with pulmonary artery sarcoma is very poor. We retrospectively reviewedthe early andlate outcomesafter treatmentfor pulmonaryarterysarcoma,and the purposeof thisstudyis to report our surgicalexperiencewiththisfataldisease.Methods:Between1999and2007,atotalofninepatients(meanage,47.4years;M:F = 4:5)underwent operations for pulmonary artery sarcoma at our institution. The tumor was radically resected and every effort was made to remove the tumor as completely as possible. Seven patients underwent surgical resection with the aid of hypothermic cardiopulmonary bypass. The completeness of resection was determined intraoperatively by frozen section biopsy of the resection margin. Results: There was no in-hospital mortality. No patients suffered from significant complications related to the operation. Follow-up was completed for all the patients with a mean duration of 19.2 months. During follow-up, six patients died with a median survival time of 17.6 months. The cause of death was related to the recurrence of pulmonary artery sarcoma in all cases. The pattern of recurrence was local recurrence and distant metastasis in three and four patients, respectively.Conclusions:Theearlyoutcomesaftersurgicaltreatmentforpulmonaryarterysarcomawereexcellent,andthelateoutcomesinthis series were no worse than those in the previous reports. We suggest that the use of cardiopulmonary bypass is important to obtain a complete resection and the completeness of the resection should be confirmed intraoperatively by frozen section biopsy of the resection margin. # 2008 European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.