RETROPERITONEAL HIGH-GRADE SARCOMA IN A 76-YEARS-OLD MAN: Case Report.

Abstract

Retroperitoneal soft tissue sarcomas (RPS) are rare tumours which account for approximately 12-15% of all soft tissue sarcomas with a mean incidence of 2.7 per million. RPS are frequently incidental ndings in the work-up for non-related symptoms or diseases and can grow to an extremely large size in the retroperitoneum before symptoms or signs of abdominal pain, back pain, bowel obstruction or a palpable abdominal mass develop. Surgical resection is the only hope for cure and is therefore the treatment of choice for localized disease. After tumour grade, the long-term survival following RPS resection is most dependent on the completeness of surgical resection. Other important factors are patient age, tumour subtype, tumour size, multifocality and centralized multidisciplinary management in a specialist sarcoma centre. The authors present a 76-year-old man presented with abdominal pain and a palpable mass in the right hemiabdomen. The abdomen CT scan revealed a voluminous retroperitoneal neoformation at the level of the right side, with axial diameters of 17x12 cm and cranio-caudal extension of 15 cm. He underwent an incisional abdominal biopsy of the neoformation with an eco-guided retroperitoneal surgical access. The histological diagnosis revealed the presence of a poorly differentiated malignant neoplasm, epithelioid-like, apparently mesenchymal, so the medical team decides to subject the patient to surgery to remove the neoformation in the right hemi-abdomen. The removed mass is then sent to the pathological anatomy and the histological diagnosis subsequently conrms the diagnosis of high-grade sarcoma with a well-differentiated liposarcoma component.