Treatment of primary retroperitoneal tumors: Single center experience

Introduction: The aim of our study is to evaluate the results of patients who underwent surgery due to primary retroperitoneal tumors in order to contribute to the knowledge pool in the literature. Material Method: The data of patients who underwent surgery due to retroperitoneal tumor at Health Sciences University, Adana City Training and Research Hospital between January 2015 and January 2023 were retrospectively scanned. Approximately 54 patients with a clinical diagnosis of PRT were included in the study. Preoperative demographic characteristics of the patients, such as age at diagnosis, gender, number of surgeries for PRT, preoperative biopsy pathology and symptom status, if any, were recorded. All patients underwent computed tomography (CT) imaging with intravenous contrast. The location, size, density and presence of contrast enhancement of PRT in preoperative imaging methods were recorded. Peroperative incision type and duration, need for erythrocyte suspension transfusion, need for organ resection, complications and length of stay in the postoperative period were evaluated. Results: The average age of a total of 54 patients who underwent surgery due to a retroperitoneal mass was 53.8±10.0 years. While 15 (27.8%) of 54 patients with a retroperitoneal mass were diagnosed incidentally, 39 (72.2%) patients were diagnosed symptomatically. The final pathological outcome of all relapsed patients was liposarcoma. The average operation time was 178.7±85.4 minutes. In 12 (22.2%) patients, adjacent organ resection was performed in addition to the mass. The average length of stay of the patients was 6.2±3.1 days. In the postoperative period, one patient required re-operation due to ileus and one patient due to bleeding. Adjuvant therapy was given to 6 (11.1%) patients after surgery. In the final pathology results of the patients, positive surgical margins were detected in 8 (14.3%) patients. Additionally, all of these patients had organ resection. In the Kaplan-Meier survival analysis, it was found that surgical margin had a statistically significant effect on average survival (p<0.001). Conclusion: According to the results of our study, microscopic surgical margin positivity is the main factor affecting survival in PRT treatment and that total organ resection positively affects survival.