Head and neck soft tissue sarcomas fighting for their own identity: A case report of a retropharyngeal liposarcoma and a literature review of case reports of retropharyngeal liposarcomas

Abstract

The management of retropharyngeal liposarcomas is challenging but has scarcely been investigated because of the rarity of these tumors. Τherefore, every case should be reported to shed light on challenges in the management of these tumors and on strategies to overcome them.Our case report describes a case of a 63-year-old man with a 3 month history of globus pharyngeus and dysphagia who was diagnosed with a retropharyngeal atypical lipomatous tumor/well-differentiated liposarcoma. The retropharyngeal liposarcoma was treated with marginal R1 excision with no adjuvant therapy, and no recurrence was observed for 18 months after treatment.A comprehensive literature review of case reports of retropharyngeal liposarcomas was also performed to identify patterns and special considerations regarding their management. Our review indicated a notable trend toward intuitive management of retropharyngeal liposarcomas on the basis of experience gained from the management of other head and neck malignancies rather than sarcomas, without the use of existing classification tools for sarcomas. These findings may be partly attributed to a lack of assessment of cases by multidisciplinary teams before treatment initiation as well as to the orphan disease status of head and neck soft tissue sarcomas in general, including retropharyngeal liposarcomas. The orphan disease status leads to a lack of adapted tools and management strategies for the newly recognized but yet indistinct entity of head and neck soft tissue sarcomas.

Keywords

• Liposarcoma
• Soft tissue sarcoma
• Head and neck cancer
• Retropharyngeal
• Case report
• Literature review