soft-tissue sarcoma

Mother was diagnosed with soft- tissue sarcoma  2/28/08 had surgery to remove mass attached to outside of colon and seven nodules in liver and two elsewhere. no known origin. recovering from surgery. small spots in lungs. now chemo of carboplatin-taxol combo Dr. says two years it will reoccur. It metastisized. really wondering if chemo will be worth the suffering?had breast cancer 7 yrs. ago

[Annekathryn Goodman, M.D.]

Hi There,
You ask a very good question. Sarcoma is a tumor from the muscle or fibrous tissue. There are different cell types. For instance a leiomyosarcoma comes form the smooth muscle. A rhadbomyosarcoma comes from skeletal muscle.
Many of these cancers are not very sensitive to chemotherapy.

However, if your mother has spots that can be seen on an xray, these spots can be used  to check for response to chemo.
So if your mother wanted a limited trial of chemo, she could get say 2 cycles and then a repeat scan. If the spots are smaller, then you know that she has a chemo sensitive cancer and that it makes sense to push the chemo. However, if there is growth of the cancer spots after limited chemo, you know chemo will not help.

It is very hard to not try something. Your mother needs to meet with her oncologist and have a careful discussion about prognosis and her wishes
best wishes