Soft tissue sarcomas are a group of cancers which develop from a number of different supportive tissues in the body including fibrous tissue, muscle, ligaments, tendons and fat.

Soft tissue sarcomas are rare. They make up less than 1% of all cancers, with only about 1200 new cases being diagnosed each year in the United Kingdom. Relatively speaking, they are actually more common in children than adults, making up about 8% of all cancers in those under the age of 15.

The majority of soft tissue sarcomas develop in the limbs and they are three times commoner in the legs than the arms.

Soft tissue sarcomas can spread to other parts of the body by sending tiny clumps of tumour cells into the blood stream. The commonest site of spread for these cancers is to the lungs.

Unlike most other types of cancer, sometimes an operation can be done to remove secondary growths in the lung from soft tissue sarcomas. This is only possible for some people and the conditions needed for surgery to be considered include:

• there must be no evidence of cancer elsewhere, outside the lungs n the secondary cancer must be contained within an amount of lung tissue that can safely be removed without causing future breathing problems
• the patient should be generally fit enough for surgery and not have any other significant chest illness
• the lung secondaries should be fairly slow-growing (this can be measured by repeated chest x-rays)

If these conditions are met then an operation might be possible. For people who are able to have surgery for lung secondaries from soft tissue sarcomas the operation can sometimes cure the condition.

If your husband's doctors decide that surgery is not an option then it is possible that he may be able to have chemotherapy. This, unfortunately, will not bring about a cure but might be able to control the cancer and slow its progress for a period of time.

Obviously the choice of treatment does depend on a variety of factors and the important thing is for your husband to discuss his particular situation fully with his doctors so that they can together agree the best approach to his care.