Preoperative intra-arterial chemotherapy.

The major factors affecting prognosis of patients with soft tissue sarcomas are local control, size of the primary tumor, and the grade of the tumor. The only factor that can be influenced following appropriate diagnostic procedures is local control. Surgery alone, even radical surgery or amputation, is insufficient to control large, poorly differentiated tumors in many cases. Preoperative therapy has been shown to be a highly effective method for local disease control. Intra-arterial therapy appears to have several advantages in the treatment of extremity sarcomas. (1) Intra-arterial therapy results in at least a sixfold increase in the concentration of drug in the blood perfusing the tumor. If combined with proximal occlusion of blood flow (balloon occlusion or tourniquet occlusion), the concentration of drug being delivered to the tumor may increase by 30-fold [32]. This high local concentration of chemotherapy is achieved in most cases without the high systemic toxicity that would be required by intravenous therapy. (2) Chemotherapy infusion prior to surgery allows administration of cytotoxic therapy through an undisturbed blood supply. This allows for an improved effect of therapy at the tumor margin, which is the area at risk for seeding the wound at the time of extirpative surgery. This may facilitate limb salvage in patients with bulky tumors. (3) Responses to this preoperative therapy allows an in vivo evaluation of the efficacy of the drug against the individual tumor. This may aid in determining efficacy of using the drug for postoperative adjuvant therapy. (4) Preoperative therapy allows treatment of the tumor while awaiting construction of custom prostheses, especially in patients with osteosarcomas of the extremities.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)