Steven I. Hajdu

Prognostic factors for recurrence and survival in head and neck soft tissue sarcomas

Background. Soft tissue sarcomas of the head and neck represent uncommon malignant neoplasms. With the exception of orbital and parameningeal sites, the treatment of sarcomas in the head and neck has not been standardized. The authors used a prospectively collected database of adult soft tissue sarcomas to identify prognostic factors for local control and survival.

Tendosynovial sarcoma. Clinicopathologic features, treatment, and prognosis

Background. Clinicopathologic features, treatment, and results are reported for 95 tendosynovial sarcomas identified from a prospective sarcoma data base established at Memorial Sloan‐Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in 1982.

Preoperative and postoperative adjuvant combination chemotherapy for adults with high grade soft tissue sarcoma.

Background. Patients with high grade soft tissue sarcoma greater than or equal to 10 cm have a 3‐year disease‐free survival of approximately 30%. There is no convincing evidence, however, that postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy is beneficial. Preoperative chemotherapy has theoretical advantages over postoperative chemotherapy.

Liposarcoma in patients younger than or equal to 22 years of age

Background. There have been few reported series of liposarcomas in patients younger than or equal to 22 years of age.

2000 years of chemotherapy of tumors.

From the earliest time there have been remedies for the treatment of cancer, usually in the form of ointments, pastes, plasters, powders, aromatic water, wine, and medicated herbal solutions. The first written prescriptions date back to 2000 BC to the Sumerians, Chinese, Indians, Persians, and Egyptians. Although plant remedies (“Herbals”) were the most common, ingredients derived from minerals (iron, copper, sulfur, arsenic, and mercury) and animals (liver, bones, and urine) were also used. The Greeks and Romans followed the traditional art of collecting and preparing remedies. The first herbal, a simple Materia Medica, was put together by the Romans and remained to be used for 15 centuries. Pliny the Roman (AD 23-79) modified substantially earliest herbalists’ simple remedies (for example, cabbage juice) for cancer by preparing concoctions, compound remedies. For the internal therapy of cancer he recommended a boiled mixture of ash of sea crabs, egg white, honey, stinging nettle with salt, and botryon (a powder made from the dried feces of falcons). Pliny’s work was one of the first scientific texts to be printed, shortly after the invention of the printing press in 1469. Despite the generalized superstition of the Greeks and Romans when it came to the care of diseases, their rational thinking led them to recognize that a remedy can be medicinal as well as poisonous. Celsus (25 BC–AD 50) an influential Roman physician, taught that cancer can be cured by diet, medicaments, and surgery. However, his thinking and reasoning were replaced by the dogmatic teaching of another Roman physician, Galen (130 –200). Galen prescribed simple and compound natural herbal remedies for cancer because he believed cancer was caused by an accumulation of bad bile and it must be purged from the body. His authority and his followers prevented any thought of alternative causes of cancer and new remedies for 16 centuries. Paulus of Aegina (625– 690), the last of the eminent Greek physicians, had an elaborate list of drugs, all unappreciated with the exception of mandrake. Mandrake is a plant with split roots. It resembled to those with vivid imaginations the body and legs of a man; therefore it was believed to possess a cure for all ailments, including cancer (Fig. 1). The juice of mandrake became a popular remedy and remained so throughout the Middle Ages because it supplied physical evidence to the believers in magic and ghosts. In Medieval Europe medicinal remedies were prepared by monks in monasteries according to Galenian formulas. It was an 1097