| Popis: |
Soft-tissue tumors range from benign to malignant tumors. Although these tumors are frequently unsuspected during surgical excision, additional pathology examination is usually performed in the absence of national guidelines in combination with the fear of missing a malignant tumor. The aim of this study is to investigate if it is safe to refrain from routinely performing pathology examinations of soft-tissue tumors when they are clinically unsuspected to have malignant origins. Data from all routinely performed pathology examinations from patients with one or more clinically unsuspected resected soft-tissue tumors between January 2018 and January 2021 were retrospectively extracted from a merged prospectively maintained institutional database. The primary outcome was the overall rate of premalignant and malignant soft-tissue tumors. Secondary outcomes included specific patient and tumor characteristics in patients with premalignant or malignant soft-tissue tumors and the healthcare costs associated with the performed pathology examinations. In this study, 1,035 resected soft-tissue tumors from 823 patients were analyzed. In total, 1,033 tumors (99.8%) turned out to be benign during the pathology examination, and the remaining two tumors (0.2%) were intermediate soft-tissue tumors without clinical consequences. Both intermediate soft-tissue tumors were larger than 10 cm during clinical examination and were larger than 5 cm during the final pathology examination. The estimated costs spent to perform these pathology examinations were €44,009. Refraining from pathology examination in unsuspected soft-tissue tumors smaller than 5 cm seems to be safe, as no malignant tumor was found in this large cohort of patients. In addition, a cost reduction of €11,000 per year can be achieved by refraining from pathology examinations in this specific group of small non-suspected soft-tissue tumors. |
