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Date: 28 April 2024
Time: 20:04
What to expect
- If your doctor thinks that you might have a soft tissue or bone sarcoma, you may be referred to our Sarcoma Unit
- Once our team has received the referral letter, you will be contacted with appointments, which may include scans and a biopsy
- The most important part of diagnosis is to take a sample of the tumour, called a biopsy to confirm whether there is cancer, and to decide the type of sarcoma
- This is usually done under local anaesthetic using ultrasound or CT
- Further scans will be done to find out whether the tumour has spread anywhere else in the body. This is called staging
- Staging scans may include CT scans, MRI scans, bone scans and PET scans
- When all the results are available, your case will be discussed at the weekly Sarcoma Multidisciplinary Team meeting and treatment decisions will be made
- You will then be given an appointment to meet one of the consultants to be given your results and a plan for treatment at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB)
- Surgery is commonly viewed as the best option
- Chemotherapy may be used if the type of sarcoma is known to be responsive
- There are circumstances when radiotherapy may offer benefits
