Predictive variables detailing the recurrence rate of soft tissue sarcomas.

Understanding prognostic variables is important for counseling patients, selecting patients for adjuvant therapy, stratifying patients for inclusion in clinical trials, and setting goals for patient treatment. Prognostic variables in soft tissue sarcoma have been defined for local recurrence, distant recurrence, and disease-specific and overall survival. Significant prognostic variables are site-dependent and time-dependent. A recently created nomogram that accounts for tumor size, grade, histology, and depth and patient age is a tool that can be used to predict 12-year sarcoma-specific survival at diagnosis. Emerging areas in predicting outcome of patients with soft tissue sarcoma include response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy and molecular markers.