Diagnostic Value of Electron Microscopy in Soft Tissue Tumors

For years the separation of carcinoma and sarcoma and the subclassification of sarcomas has been based on the appearance of the tumor cells and their microscopic growth pattern and information derived from certain histochemical and special stains. Although this method of study has produced good agreement among pathologists in the separation of carcinoma from sarcoma, it has given less uniform results in the subclassification of sarcomas. There remain examples of neoplasms of different histogenesis, the classification of which is questionable because of similar cytologic and growth patterns at the light microscopic level; i.e. amelanotic melanoma versus carcinoma and occasionally sarcoma, sarcomas with an epithelial pattern of growth simulating carcinoma, histologically similar mesenchymal tumors of different histogenesis (histiocytoma versus rhabdomyosarcoma, lytic osteogenic sarcoma versus rhabdomyosarcoma), and myxomatous mesenchymal tumors of diverse histogenesis (myxoid rhabdo and liposarcomas, cardiac myxoma, myxoid neurofibroma, etc.