Secondary resection of soft tissue sarcomas within the scope of a multimodality therapy concept

: We treated 95 patients with primary soft tissue sarcoma of the extremities or trunk between 1988 and 1995, who were operated on initially elsewhere and their tumors were supposed to be excised completely. We performed a primary re-excision in all patients and found residual tumor in 46%. After a median follow-up of 61 months, 16 patients developed a local recurrence and 6 patients died due to the tumor disease. Primary re-excision is therefore indicated in most cases where the histology report of an assumed benign tumor reveals malignancy.