Soft Tissue Sarcoma

Abstract

Soft tissue sarcomas represent a very heterogeneous group of mesenchymal malignant tumors that may occur at any age. Some histotypes are typically of a given age and rare in others, but as a whole group, soft tissue sarcomas are tumors bridging the pediatric and adult settings: adolescents and young adults are therefore age groups in which the soft tissue sarcoma family represents a subgroup of relatively frequent tumors. Managing these malignancies in patients in this age bracket poses various clinical problems, partly because different therapeutic approaches have been sometimes adopted by pediatric and adult oncologists, even though they were dealing with the same condition. In addition, whether the biology and clinical behavior of a given histotype is the same in patients of different ages remains to be seen. The treatment of adolescent and young adult patients with soft tissue sarcomas is particularly complex and necessarily w and requires adequate expertise. Cooperation between pediatric oncologists and adult oncologists is of critical importance to improve the quality of the treatment as well as the research programs dedicated to young patients with these diseases.