Sarcomas in the United States: Recent trends and a call for improved staging

The cover for issue 25 of Oncotarget features Figure 5, "Cause-specific mortality by histological subtype (n=64,645)," by Gage, et al.

Sarcomas represent a heterogeneous group of tumors, and there is lack of data describing contemporary changes in patterns of care.

There were 78,527 cases of sarcomas with an overall incidence of 7.1 cases per 100,000 people, increasing from 6.8 in 2002 to 7.7 in 2014.

This comprehensive national study highlights important trends including increasing incidence, changing histologic types, and underestimation of true incidence.

Nita Ahuja, MD, MBA, FACS, a Yale Medicine surgical oncologist and Chair of the Department of Surgery at the Yale School of Medicine who began the research at Johns Hopkins University said, "Sarcomas are a heterogeneous group of over 80 different tumors arising from mesenchymal or connective tissue."

In 2018, soft tissue sarcomas will represent approximately 0.8% of all cancers in the United States and are among the top five causes of cancer deaths for those under 20 years old.

This study utilizes a nationally representative cancer database, the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results, to study sarcomas in the US over 12 recent years and evaluate trends in epidemiology, management, and survival.

The Ahuja research team concluded, "Grouping of histological types meant that we did not offer comments on the over 80 subtypes of sarcomas, however, the grouping assisted presenting overall epidemiological data on sarcomas."

Full text - https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.26809

Correspondence to - Nita Ahuja - nita.ahuja@yale.edu

Keywords - sarcoma, mesenchymal tumors, connective tissue tumors, SEER, trends of sarcoma