ESMO E-Learning: Uterine Sarcoma

This E-Learning module provides key facts about uterine sarcomas, a rare and heterogeneous group of diseases.​ It features epidemiologic data, classification of these tumours, standard treatment in different disease settings and also highlights the key characteristics of certain tumour types from the aspect of tumour characteristics and management modalities.

The author underlines that pre-operative diagnosis remains challenging.​ Furthermore, in half of patients with even early stages of disease a relapse occurs, mostly in the form of distant metastases. Standard surgical approach is hysterectomy with ovaries preservation in premenopausal women.  

In the module, the author provides essentials in terms of post-operative systemic therapy​ for localised uterine leiomyosarcoma, the role of chemotherapy and radiotherapy in the management of patients with locally advanced disease, the role of chemotherapy, endocrine therapy and radiotherapy in metastatic and relapsed settings.

Besides elaborating on uterine leiomyosarcoma, the author also deeps into tumour features, prognosis and management approaches for patients with endometrial stromal sarcoma, adenosarcoma, undifferentiated uterine sarcoma, providing illustrations in NTRK fusion sarcoma, SMARCA4 deficiency sarcoma, and PDGF-COL1a1 fibrosarcoma​. In terms of miscellaneous mesenchymal tumours, the author provides illustrations for cases of perivascular epithelioid cell tumour and uterine inflammatory myofibroblastic tumour.  

The author encourages the centralisation of care in specialised centres, urges for a referral network and underlines that a multidisciplinary approach is key to achieve the best outcomes in patients with these rare tumour types.