The search flow is depicted in the PRISMA chart (figure 2). Twenty-three articles have been retained for appraisal and analysis. Seven publications compared limited resection to wider resection as a predetermined surgical strategy irrespective of the morbid anatomy of the tumor (table2). More publications compared sole tumor resection to en-bloc resection of the tumor and contiguous organ(s) selectively derived by the tumor relations. Of those, seven articles addressed RPS in general (table 3) and six articles included liposarcomas only (table 4). Three reports included comparison of multivisceral resection to simple resection regarding operative morbidity (table 5). All studies were retrospective.
3.1. Extended Resection
The Instituto Nazionale Tumori group adopted compartmental surgery in 2002. Gronchi and his group (20) published a retrospective single-center series including consecutive patients treated from January 1985 through September 2007. The authors compared patients managed before 2002 to those managed later, assuming that the time when patients received their operation correlated with the type of surgery. The authors republished their analysis a few years later (21) adding patients treated in 2008 to the recent group and adding four more patients to the early period group. Unfortunately, there was no direct information on the surgical procedures in either report, and the comparative groups were not contemporary. These two reports are not included in the meta-analysis.
Bonvalot et al (22) published a retrospective analysis of a French national database. The authors analyzed 374 patients who had been operated for cure. Surgeries were categorized as compartmental or standard. Category assignment was based on patients’ operative reports. The standard surgery group included patients who had selective resection of contiguous organs. Median overall survival was 6 years in the whole cohort. Compartmental resection significantly decreased the risk of abdominal recurrence (HR 3.29 with standard surgery, 95% CI 1.90 to 5.70). The difference persisted in multivariate analysis (HR 1.99, 95% CI 1.03 to 3.84, P value = 0.04). The surgical strategy had no impact on overall survival.
Santos and colleagues (23) conducted a retrospective analysis of 91 consecutive patients treated from 1992 – 2008 at a referral hospital in Brazil. The authors compared compartmental resection to sole tumor resection. Both groups had similar baseline criteria. Overall survival did not differ according to the type of surgery. The authors reanalyzed their cohort including patients who achieved a free pathological margin only (R0 resection). In this subset of patients, sole tumor resection fared better than compartmental surgery in terms of survival and morbidity.
Mussi et al (24) reported the data of 77 primary RPS patients treated from 1997 through 2008 at the Italian Istituto Clinico Humanitas. Simple and multivisceral surgery were associated with comparable overall and disease specific survival (HR 0.989, 95% CI 0.490 to 3.578, P value 0.355) and (HR 0.920, 95% CI 0.205 to 5.323, P value 0.927), respectively.
In response to the debate that ensued, the Trans-Atlantic RPS working group was established (later called the Trans-Atlantic Australasian RPS working group, TARPSWG). The group retrospectively examined 1007 patients treated between 2002 and 2011 at eight high-volume centers. At that time, compartmental surgery was adopted at some sites while limited surgery was the standard at others. Again, the study lacked direct information about surgical procedures. In this report, crude cumulative incidence of local recurrence of well-differentiated liposarcoma at 8 years was best in the centers that had adopted radiation therapy (RT) and compartmental surgery (5% LR, 95% CI 0.7 to 35.5). The corresponding figures for institutions that had not employed routine RT was 34.8% with compartmental surgery, and 42.5% with classic surgery, with overlapping confidence intervals. Local recurrence of leiomyosarcoma was similar in all study siters. Overall survival was similar across all groups (25). The postoperative morbidity outcome of this latter cohort of patients from eight high-volume centers was reported in another article. Overall, the rate of 30-day events was 1 .8% for mortality, 16.4% for serious morbidity, and 10.5% for reoperation. The odds of severe complications increased with four or more resected organs per case (26).
Two publications compared enucleation (D1) to wide margin (D2) resection. A retrospective analysis was conducted for 42 patients treated at the Universita` Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Italy (27). Of the patients treated for cure, seven had wide resection and 17 had inadequate surgical margin. 5-year disease-free survival was 63.5 ± 21.2 and 28.6 ± 12.6 months, respectively, P value 0.09.
A consecutive series of 56 patients treated at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona in Spain included enucleation in 27 patients and en-bloc surgery regardless of infiltration in 29 patients (28). Disease-free survival but not overall survival was better in the radical group.
Table 2 shows the description, quality scoring, and the oncological outcome of the studies that compared extended surgery to less radical surgery.
On meta-analysis, the group effect size “log (HR)” for overall survival was 0.01 (-0.35, 0.35) “mean (95% credible interval)” on Bayesian model and was 0.01 (-0.26, 0.28) on Wald model. I2 was 92.8%. The group effect size “log (HR)” for disease-free survival was 0.23 (-0.36, 0.17) “mean (95% credible interval)” on Bayesian model and was 0.25 (-0.16, 0.12) on Wald model. I2 was 96.8%.
Figure 3 is a forest plot of overall survival and disease-free survival of the studies that directly compared extended surgery to less radical surgery.
3.2. Selective Organ Resection
A few population-based studies compared simple tumor resection to en-bloc resection of contiguous organs. Weng et al (29) searched SEER database for AJCC stage I RPS operated from 2004 through 2015. The authors reported similar overall and RPS-specific mortality in patients who had simple or en bloc resection. However, en-bloc surgery decreased mortality in a subset of patients who received perioperative RT (HR 0.52, 95%CI 0.30-0.91; P = 0.02).
Villano and colleagues (30) examined the National Cancer Database (NCDB) for stage I-III RPS patients treated in the same period as Weng et al and looking for similar endpoints. Median survival was 84 and 73.9 months in en bloc surgery and simple excision, respectively (P value 0.100). Independently, Littau et al (31) also examined the NCDB for non-lipomatous RPS in almost the same period as above. En-bloc resection, but not preoperative RT, marginally increased the odds of R0 resection in small tumors <5 cm only (HR 7.81, 95% CI 1.23 to 160.51, P value 0.07). On the contrary, in intermediate size and large tumors, en-bloc surgery was associated with increased odds of death (HR 1.42, 95% CI 1.06 to 1.90, P value 0.02) and (HR 1.26, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.54, P value 0.02) respectively. The same group (32) ran a corresponding analysis for liposarcoma (LPS). In this tumor, the type of surgical procedure had no connection with the odds of achieving R0 margin. The odds of death increased in intermediate sized tumors excised en-bloc (HR 1.66, 95% CI 1.04 to 2.65, P value 0.04) and decreased in large tumors that received postoperative RT (HR 0.76, 95% CI 0.64 to 0.90, P value 0.00).
Turner and colleagues (33) examined the Alberta Cancer Registry for RPS patients treated from 1990 through October 2014. Multivisceral resection was performed in 76 patients and simple resection in 26 patients. Patients in the simple excision group received preoperative RT less often but have similar recurrence-free survival to patients in the multivisceral group (HR 0.82, 95% CI 0.42 – 1.60, P value 0.57).
Koeng and colleagues (34) at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf resected any organ that was 1 cm away from the tumor. As such, their multivisceral resection was selectively performed based on the morbid anatomy of every tumor. In their series of 54 consecutive patients, multivisceral resection had no impact on survival compared to single organ resection (median overall survival of 60.3 vs. 53.1 months, respectively. P value 0.63). Hager and colleagues (35) at the University of Freiburg had a similar surgical policy and reached a similar conclusion from the retrospective analysis of a cohort of 46 patients (5-Year Progression-free survival of 65.2% vs. 80.8%. P value 0.267).
On the contrary, a retrospective study of 26 patients from the Japanese Nara Medical University reported a better overall survival associated with resection of adjacent organs (36).
Table 3 outlines the studies investigating contiguous organ resection in RPS.
Other hospital-based studies specifically addressed the impact of resection in liposarcoma. Singer et al (37) examined the records of 177 patients with primary LPS treated at the MSKCC from 1982 through 2001. 38% of patients had contiguous organ resection. In multivariate analysis, contiguous organ resection was associated with the probability of local recurrence (HR 1.7, 95% CI 1.02 to 2.8, P value 0.04) with marginal effect on disease-specific survival (HR 1.9, 95% CI 1.01 to 3.5, P value 0.05).
Ikoma and colleagues (38) from MDACC reported the treatment results of 83 liposarcoma patient. Of the patients treated for cure, 58% had local relapse. Concomitant organ resection was not associated with better DFS (HR 1.022, 95% CI 0.537 to 1.946, P value 0.946). Retrospective hospital studies of Asian populations reached similar conclusions (39, 40) and (Table 4).
Table 4 outlines the studies investigating contiguous organ resection in retroperitoneal liposarcomas.
Because selective organ resection entails en-bloc excision of contiguous organs if, and only if suggested by the operative findings, patients who had this type of surgery probably had more advanced tumors. In this setup, statistical insignificance of the oncological outcome may correspond to clinical benefit. For this reason, we restricted the meta-analysis to studies that demonstrated baseline equivalence of the two groups of patients under comparison. Two propensity score matched studies (29, 30) and two studies with objective evidence of baseline equivalence (36, 38) fulfilled this inclusion criterion for meta-analysis.
On meta-analysis, the group effect size “log (HR)” for overall survival was 0.03 (-0.30, 0.26) “mean (95% credible interval)” on Bayesian model and was 0.02 (-0.17, 0.13) on Wald model. I2 was 89.2%.
Figure 4 is the forest plot of overall survival of studies investigating selective organ resection.
3.3. Morbidity of multivisceral resection
The impact of multiple organ resection on postoperative morbidity was also reported. The The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP) database was searched for patients operated on 2005 – 2007 for primary RPS (41). The 30-day rate for mortality was 1.7% and 1% with and without organ resection, respectively. Rate of severe morbidity was 12% and 11%, and the rate of reoperation was 6.9% and 3.1% respectively. Concomitant organ resection did not significantly affect the rates. The same database was independently examined for cases operated from 2012 to 2015. The 30-day rate for mortality was <1% and 2% with and without organ resection, respectively. Rate of severe morbidity was 11% and 8%, and the rate of reoperation was 5% and 3% respectively. Again, no significant difference was observed in association with organ resection (42).
Table 5 outlines the studies demonstrating the impact of multivisceral resection on operative morbidity.
On meta-analysis, the group effect size “log (HR)” for severe morbidity was 0.14 (-0.37, 0.56) “mean (95% credible interval)” on Bayesian model and was 0.18 (-0.22, 0.59) on Wald model. I2 was 00.0%.
Figure 5 is the forest plot of severe morbidity of multivisceral resection compared to simple resection.