Introduction

Soft-tissue sarcoma (STS) is a common condition in the dog. Recurrence rates following surgery can be high therefore wide resection is the current accepted practice. This recommendation arises from university and hospital data and may misrepresent the nature of the disease in the general population, resulting in excessive surgical morbidity for some patients. The objective of this retrospective study was to define the outcome for a large cohort of canine patients with a histological diagnosis of STS, managed solely by surgery in first opinion practice.

Materials and Methods

Three hundred cases of STS from early 2000 were identified from the histological records of Finn Pathologists, Diss, Norfolk, UK. Questionnaires requesting clinically relevant data were forwarded to their veterinarians. Data were analysed using the Kaplan-Meier method, logrank tests and Cox's proportional hazards model.

Results

Data from 104 dogs were analysed. Minimum duration of follow up was 7 years and 2 months. 22% of animals died due to STS. Tumours recurred locally in 27.9% of cases. Median survival time (MST) was 1013 days. Median disease free interval (DFI) was not reached. Neither MST nor DFI were significantly associated with tumour size, location or magnitude of surgical resection.

DFI was significantly longer in dogs with histological confirmation of tumour free margins. On multivariate analysis, only clinicians' gross assessment of the invasiveness of the tumour was shown to be significant with respect to both MST and DFI.

Conclusions

This study has many limitations; however, MST and DFI were not improved by aggressive surgical resection. Therefore this may not be warranted in all animals.

While the referral population of STS may differ from the general population, in this study, gross appearance of the tumour was of prognostic significance.

Further investigation is necessary.