Case report

Primary mediastinal liposarcoma: a case report

Nikolaos Barbetakis¹ , Georgios Samanidis¹ , Elpida Samanidou¹ , Efthimios Kirodimos¹ , Anastasia Kiziridou² , Theodoros Bischiniotis³ and Christodoulos Tsilikas¹

¹  Thoracic Surgery Department, Theagenio Cancer Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece

²  Pathology Department, Theagenio Cancer Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece

³  Cardiology Department, Theagenio Cancer Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece

author email corresponding author email

Journal of Medical Case Reports 2007, 1:161doi:10.1186/1752-1947-1-161

Published:	30 November 2007

Abstract

Introduction

Liposarcoma is the most commonly diagnosed soft tissue sarcoma in adults and occurs predominantly in the lower limbs and retroperitoneum. Primary mediastinal liposarcomas are rare.

They are often asymptomatic and when growing to large size the presenting symptoms are related to direct invasion or compression of other thoracic organs such as the heart, great vessels and lung.

Case presentation

A case of a 68-year-old man with primary mediastinal liposarcoma involving the diaphragm and pericardium and successfully managed by complete surgical excision is presented. The patient's postoperative course was uneventful with no evidence of recurrence 9 months after the operation.

Conclusion

Surgical removal is the optimal treatment for a mediastinal liposarcoma. If the entire tumor can not be resected, surgical debulking often results in symptomatic relief. International literature has demonstrated that recurrent disease occurs and therefore a long-term careful follow up is required.