Benign soft tissue tumours: analysis and histopathologic^ study of 2,213 cases in an indigenous black African population

Abstract

Abstract Aims and objectives'. The aim of this retrospective study was to determine the pattern of benign soft tissue tumours in a tertiary hospital based histopathology service in South-western Nigeria. Materials and method: The records of all benign soft tissue tumours diagnosed in the Department of Pathology, University College Hospital, Ibadan, between January 1970 and December 2002 were retrieved, and reclassified using the 2002 World Health Organization classification of soft tissue tumours. The sites of lesions were coded into five categories: upper extremity, lower extremity, head and neck, trunk and abdomen. Clinical information obtained included age, gender, histopathological diagnosis, recurrence and presence of multiple lesions. AM cases where any of this information,was not available were excluded from the study. Results: Two thousand two hundred and thirteen (2213) cases fulfilled the inclusion criteria out of2801 cases retrieved from the records of the department. They comprised adipocytic tumours (accounting for 55.5%), vascular (24.5%), fibroblastic/ myofibroblast (9.4%), fibrohistiocytic (8%), smooth muscle (0.9%), perivascular/pericytic (1.2%), chondro-osseous (0.1%) and tumours of uncertain differentiation (0.4%). Overall male: female ratio was 1:1. The age range was from 5months to 83 years, with peak age group of 30-39 years in males and 20-29 years in females. Conclusion:This study shows a similar pattern of benign soft tissue tumours in our series to what obtains in other parts of the world, although our patients tended to be younger, a reflection of the population structure of our country. However, in contrast to Caucasian series, deep fibromatosis was observed to be far more common than superficial fibromatosis. Also giant cell tumour of tendon sheath has a slight male predominance in contrast to overwhelming female predominance in other series.