Soft Tissue Sarcomas

In soft tissue sarcoma, cancer cells are found in the soft tissue of parts of the body, such as:

• muscles
• connective tissues (tendons)
• vessels that carry blood or lymph
• joints
• fat

Sarcomas can also form in the bones. Bone sarcomas are covered in a different section of this Web site.

Stanford Expertise

Cancer is a serious disease. To get the best treatment, you want a physician who is familiar with your particular type of cancer. Yet because many soft tissue sarcomas are rare it can be difficult to find a doctor who has treated patients with the disease. Our specialists at the Cancer Center not only treat soft tissue sarcomas, but also offer the most advanced diagnostic technologies and treatments available today.

Soft tissue sarcomas are treated by expert physicians in the Musculoskeletal Section of the Cancer Center Sarcoma/Bone Cancers Clinic. The clinic brings together specialists in radiology, interventional radiology, pathology, radiation oncology, medical and pediatric oncology, and surgical oncology from the departments of Orthopedics, Otolaryngology, and General and Pediatric Surgery.

The team approach includes:

• Enhanced quality care for complex cases
  
  
• Multidisciplinary sarcoma conference
  
  
• Limb and organ preservation
  
  
• Physical therapy, occupational therapy, and prosthetics
  
  
• Genetic risk assessment and counseling
  
  
• Pathological expertise, including immunohistochemical stains, cytogenetics and molecular genetics, and borderline specimen interpretation

Personalized Care
Treatment recommendations are customized to meet individual patients' needs and may include a variety of modalities (surgical, radiotherapeutic, and chemo-or immunotherapeutic) delivered concurrently or consecutively.

Particular strengths of individual departments or sections include:

Radiology

• Advanced imaging with 3-D reconstruction
• Magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy
• Interventional radiology techniques
• PET (positron emission tomography) scan staging

Radiation Oncology

• 3D Conformal radiation with advanced immobilization
  
  
• Intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) that allows doctors to deliver a high dose of radiation to the tumor site while a patient is still in the operating room during surgery. One-time IORT is more convenient than traditional radiotherapy and reduces the exposure of healthy tissues to radiation.
  
  
• Intensity modulated radiation (IMRT) that reduces the dose of radiation received by healthy tissue, and can allow doctors to deliver radiation to difficult-to-reach areas
  
  
• Brachytherapy -- the placement of radioactive materials at the tumor site to deliver more targeted radiation therapy and make treatment more convenient.

Surgery

• Skilled management of complex cases with attention to limb and organ preservation
• Advanced, full service rehabilitation
• Heated limb perfusion

Oncology

• Active adult and pediatric oncology programs
  
  
• Access to clinical trials through adult and pediatric cooperative group studies for both bone and soft tissue sarcomas (rhabdomyosarcoma and non-rhabdomyosarcoma soft tissue histologies)
  
  
• Novel therapies

Clinical Trials
The Cancer Center has a number of clinical trials underway for soft tissue sarcomas in adults and children.

Whenever appropriate, patients are offered access to clinical trials.  For information about the pediatric program see Lucile Packard Children's Hospital .