Surgical Treatment and Chemotherapy of Adult Primary Liver Sarcoma: Experiences from a Single Hospital in China.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study is to improve the preoperative diagnostic accuracy and treatment results by investigating the clinical features and prognosis of primary liver sarcoma (PLS).

METHODS: Clinical data, surgical treatments, adjuvant chemotherapy, and prognosis of 17 PLS patients whose diseases were pathologically confirmed were retrospectively analyzed.

RESULTS: The main clinical symptoms included epigastric pain in 9 patients, epigastric distention in 7, and loss of appetite in 4; these symptoms were detected during the postoperative follow-up for gastric carcinoma in 1. The resection rate was 64.7% (12/17), including R0 resection in 10 patients and R1 resection in 2, and laparotomy with biopsy in 5. Five patients accepted an adjuvant selective hepatic artery infusion chemotherapy (mitomycin C 16-20 mg+ 5-fluorouracil 5.0 g+ epirubicin 40-50 mg), and 4 accepted adjuvant systemic chemotherapy (vincristin, cisplatin, cyclophosphamide, and adriamycin). All 5 patients with simple laparotomy died within 1 year, and the overall 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival rates for all patients were 58.8% (10/17), 29.4% (5/17) and 11.7% (2/17), respectively, whereas those were 100.0% (10/10), 50.0% (5/10), and 20.0% (2/10) for R0 resected patients respectively.

CONCLUSIONS: The diagnosis of PLS is difficult before operation due to its nonspecific manifestations, and the high survival rate can be achieved by radical resection with adjuvant chemotherapy.