Patterns of Recurrence in Retroperitoneal Liposarcomas: Reflecting Surgical Approach or Tumor Biology?

Excerpt

Complete surgical resection remains the mainstay of curative treatment for retroperitoneal sarcomas (RPS) and provides the only hope for long-term survival. Unfortunately, the major mode of failure leading to poor outcome for retroperitoneal liposarcoma is intra-abdominal locoregional recurrence. The cause for the high rate of local recurrence following resection of retroperitoneal liposarcomas in contrast to limb sarcoma is customarily attributed to the specific anatomical site, containing vital neural and vascular structures, axial skeleton, and visceral organs limiting the ability to perform a wide resection. In addition, inherent tumor biology of liposarcomas has to be considered. The biological behavior of retroperitoneal liposarcomas are unpredictable. Clinically, some well-differentiated (WD) RPS behave in an indolent fashion over many years and never develop a dedifferentiated (DD) component. Other DD RPS develop de novo without a documented WD component. Some WD RPS can recur with a mainly DD component and vice versa. Although WD and DD RPS have a common genetic feature associated with genomic amplification which include amplification in 12q13–15 resulting in MDM2 and CDK4 overexpression, the specific genetic and molecular events leading to the unpredictable behavior is still not clear.1 …