RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN SOFT-TISSUE TUMORS

This article reviews the clinicopathological features of several recen tly described soft tissue tumours, namely ossifying fibromyxoid tumour , angiomyofibroblastoma, epithelioid angiosarcoma, retiform haemangioe ndothelioma, intra-abdominal desmoplastic small cell tumour, spindle c ell liposarcoma and low grade fibromyxoid sarcoma. Conceptual changes are also discussed, These include the relationship between Ewing's sar coma and peripheral primitive neuroectodermal tumour, the proposed use of the term atypical lipoma for a subset of well differentiated lipos arcomas, and the occurrence at a wide variety of sites of inflammatory myofibroblastic lesions of uncertain biological potential. In additio n, advances in the study of soft tissue lesions at the molecular and c ytogenetic levels are outlined, with particular emphasis on the recent identification of tumour-specific karyotypic abnormalities in a wide variety of sarcomas.