Giant retroperitoneal liposarcoma: Case report and review of the literature

AIM: Retroperitoneal soft-tissue sarcomas are relatively uncommon diseases, the most frequent histo-type, ranging from 20% to 45% of all cases, is represented by liposarcoma, which is a hard-to treat conditionfor its local aggressiveness and clinical aspecificity.PRESENTATION OF CASE: We report a case of a 64-years-old woman who underwent surgical resection fora giant pleomorphic retroperitoneal liposarcoma.DISCUSSION: Currently chemotherapy for retroperitoneal soft-tissue sarcomas is no effective, and radio-therapy has limited efficacy due to the toxicity affecting adjacent intra-abdominal structures, showedvalidity only in case of high-grade malignancy by reducing local recurrence, but with no advantage inoverall survival. Nowadays only, the complete surgical resection remains the most important predictorof local recurrence and overall survival.CONCLUSION: The removal of a retroperitoneal sarcoma of remarkable size is a challenge for the surgeonowing to the anatomical site, to the absence of an anatomically evident vascular-lymphatic peduncleand to the adhesions contracted with the contiguous organs and with the great vessels. Therefore, webelieve that, particularly for large-size diseases associated to high-grade malignancy, a complete surgicalresection with removal of the contiguous intra and retroperitoneal organs when infiltrated representsthe only therapeutic option to obtain a negative margin and therefore an oncological radicality.