Bone and Soft Tissue Oncology

Patient and Family Education

Adult Soft Tissue Sarcoma

Risk Factors

The American Cancer Society estimates that about 8,700 new cases of soft tissue sarcoma will be diagnosed in the United States in 2001. The disease affects both men and women as well as children.

Certain risk factors may increase a person's chance of developing the disease:

Heredity: Several conditions that run in families may increase a person's chance of developing sarcomas. These include the following:

neurofibromatosis, a disease in which benign tumors form in the nerves
Gardner's syndrome, a disease that causes polyps and cancers in the intestines
Li-Fraumeni syndrome, which increases the chances of developing several different kinds of cancer
retinoblastoma, an eye cancer that sometimes is hereditary and, when it is, carries an increased risk of bone and soft tissue sarcoma.

Damaged lymph nodes: Women who have had their lymph nodes removed and/or treated with radiation for breast cancer have a slight risk of developing a rare type of cancer called lymphangiosarcoma, a sarcoma in the lymph vessels.

Radiation: Rarely, people who have received radiation treatment for previous cancers may develop soft tissue sarcomas as a result of the radiation.

This page was last updated on: September 21, 2009.