Soft Tissue

Abstract

Tumors of soft tissue are among the most challenging in surgical pathology. There are several reasons for this: they are rare, so you see few in training; they are overlapping in morphology; they do not always obey the principles that help you to identify malignant potential in carcinomas; and each entity has at least three names, four variants, and seven mimickers. However, this chapter covers some of the names you will hear most commonly. The tumors are broken down into lines of differentiation, with the caveats that there are some tumors that do not differentiate along any known lineage (grouped separately) and that many soft tissue tumors dedifferentiate into the same final common malignant pathway, undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma.