Patient surveillance after treatment for soft-tissue sarcoma

About 1% of all cancers are soft tissue sarcomas (STS); about 60% of these occur in the extremities. Post-treatment surveillance programs are designed to identify recurrence, new primary cancers, and complications of therapy early enough to increase survival duration and quality of life. The intensity of surveillance varies among surgeons. We hypothesized that geographic factors would account for much of this variation. The 1,592 members of the Society of Surgical Oncology were surveyed regarding their personal postoperative STS surveillance strategy using standardized clinical vignettes and a questionnaire based on the vignettes. Practice patterns were analyzed by US Census Region, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), and managed care organization (MCO) penetration rate, using repeated measures analysis of variance. The study end-point was surveillance intensity. Mean follow-up intensity for the 12 surveillance modalities on the questionnaire was highly correlated with tumor size, grade, and year post surgery. Controlling for tumor stage, grade, and year post surgery, the practice location of the surgeon infrequently impacted surveillance intensity. MSA was a significant (p<0.05) predictor only of office visit frequency. MCO penetration rate significantly predicted only the frequency of urinalysis and tumor-site MRI. US Census Region significantly predicted only the frequency of LFTs. Geographic factors do not generally predict self-reported surveillance practice patterns for patients after curative-intent STS surgery. The overall variation in follow-up intensity appears to reflect factors not evaluated, such as the absence of high-quality evidence supporting any particular strategy and the quality of patients' insurance.