The role of histology, grading, location of tumour and ploidy in evaluation of outcome in patients with liposarcoma.

Department of Tumour Pathology, Maria Skłodowska-Curie Memorial Cancer Center and Institute of Oncology, Kraków, Poland The review of literature indicates that several clinico-morphological factors such as location of the primary tumour as well as its size, histologic subtype, and grade or even selected molecular changes may significantly affect survival of liposarcoma (LPS) patients. Data concerning prognostic importance of DNA ploidy status in LPS cells are extremely limited and results of flow cytometry (FCM) studies have never been compiled with the current classification of malignant adipocytic tumours. Based on evaluation of material from 54 liposarcomas which was available for both histological and FCM analysis, we distinguished four prognostic groups of patients. The best prognosis was noticed for diploid and grade G1 well-differentiated or myxoid liposarcomas localised on extremities. None of the patients with lipoma-like WDLPS and myxoid liposarcoma grade 1 metastasised, while metastases were observed among patients with dedifferentiated LPS (70% of 5-year MFS) and cellular myxoid or round cell liposarcoma (20% of 5-year MFS, only). The metastasis-free survival curves for the above mentioned groups of patients differed significantly (p = 0.00001).