A clinico‐pathologic study of soft tissue neoplasms: An experience from a rural tertiary care hospital

Context: Soft tissue is a non-epithelial extra skeletal tissue of the body exclusive of reticuloendothelial system, glia and supporting tissue of the various parenchymal organs. Aims: To study the clinico-pathological correlation, relative incidence of benign & malignant neoplasms, frequency of age, sex & site wise distribution & histopathological pattern of soft tissue neoplasms [STNs]. Setting and Design: Comprises of soft tissue neoplasms studied during six months. Cases of STNs diagnosed based on history and clinical examination and subjected to biopsy or surgery and subsequent histopathological examination were included while patients who were treated conservatively or referred to other hospitals and STNs of systemic organs were excluded. Materials & Methods: The tissues were fixed in 10% formalin and were processed. Sections of approximately 5 microns were cut and stained by routine hematoxylin and eosin [H & E] and immunohistochemistry [IHC] was done where ever required. All STNs were classified as per 2013 WHO classification. Result: Out of 70 cases of STNs recorded, 95.72% were benign and 04.28% were malignant. STNs in general had slightly male preponderance. Of all benign soft tissue neoplasms, the commonest was lipoma (64.28%) followed by peripheral nerve sheath (11.4%), vascular (8.5%), fibroblastic (4.28%), fibro-histiocytic (2.8%) and tumors of uncertain differentiation (2.8%) in the decreasing order to frequency. Conclusion: Availability of a modern, more logical histopathologic classification and standard nomenclature now offers a better clinic-pathological co-relation. The clinico-morphological evaluation is still the gold standard for the proper diagnosis of soft tissue neoplasms.