Follow-up after primary treatment of soft tissue sarcoma of extremities: Impact of frequency of follow-up imaging on disease-specific survival

摘要

Background and Objectives: We explored the impact of frequency of surveillance imaging on disease-specific survival (DSS) in patients with extremity soft tissue sarcoma (STS). Methods: Locoregional imaging (LRI) and chest imaging (CI) were used to detect local recurrence (LR) and distant metastasis (DM), respectively. Relapsing patients were retrospectively assigned to more frequent surveillance (MFS) or less frequent surveillance (LFS) groups, according to the median interval for each follow-up modality. Outcome measures included overall DSS (O-DSS), post-LR DSS, and post-DM DSS. Results: We assigned 165 patients to three distinct risk groups according to tumor size (≤5 vs. >cm), depth (superficial- vs. deep-seated), grade (I vs. II or III), and surgical margin (≥10 vs.