Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World Journal of Clinical Cases. Sep 6, 2019; 7(17): 2549-2555
Published online Sep 6, 2019. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v7.i17.2549
Synovial sarcoma in the plantar region: A case report and literature review
Jie Gao, Yu-Song Yuan, Ting Liu, Hao-Run Lv, Hai-Lin Xu
Jie Gao, Ting Liu, Pingxiang Health Vocational College, Pingxiang Medical School, Pingxiang 337000, Jiangxi Province, China
Yu-Song Yuan, Hao-Run Lv, Hai-Lin Xu, Department of Trauma and Orthopedics, Peking University People’s Hospital, Beijing 100044, China
Author contributions: Gao J and Yuan YS contributed equally to this work and should be regarded as co-first authors; Gao J and Yuan YS treated the patient and wrote this paper; Liu T and Lv HR collected the information; Xu HL treated the patient and guided article writing.
Informed consent statement: All involved persons consented to the publication of this article.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article are reported.
CARE Checklist (2016) statement: The authors have read the CARE Checklist (2016), and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CARE Checklist (2016).
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hai-Lin Xu, MD, Chief Doctor, Doctor, Professor, Department of Trauma and Orthopedics, Peking University People’s Hospital, No. 11, South Xizhimen Street, Xicheng District, Beijing 100044, China. xuhailinfa@163.com
Telephone: +86-10-88324570 Fax: +86-10-88324570
Received: April 7, 2019
Peer-review started: April 8, 2019
First decision: June 19, 2019
Revised: July 6, 2019
Accepted: July 20, 2019
Article in press: July 20, 2019
Published online: September 6, 2019
Abstract
BACKGROUND

Synovial sarcoma (SS), a rare malignant soft tissue tumor whose histological origin is still unknown, often occurs in limbs in young people and is easily misdiagnosed.

CASE SUMMARY

We report a 24-year-old man who sought treatment for plantar pain thought to be caused by a foot injury that occurred 4 years prior. Currently, he had been seen at another hospital for a 1-wk history of unexplained pain in the left plantar region and was treated with acupuncture, a kind of therapy of Chinese medicine, which partly relieved the pain. Because of this, the final diagnosis of biphasic SS was made after two subsequent treatments by pathological evaluation after the last operation. SS is rarely seen in the plantar area, and his history of a left plantar injury confused the original diagnosis.

CONCLUSION

This study shows that pathological and imaging examinations may play a vital role in the early diagnosis and treatment of SS.

Keywords: Imaging examination, Pathological examination, Plantar, Synovial sarcoma, Case report

Core tip: A young male patient suffered from plantar pain for 1 wk. The symptoms were relieved after a kind of Chinese traditional invasive treatment. After that, the hemogram showed infection and magnetic resonance imaging showed that there was a soft tissue mass with a clear boundary in the plantar region. Rare location, complex medical history, invasive treatment, and auxiliary examination were easy to mislead doctors’ judgments. Finally, the diagnosis was confirmed as synovial sarcoma by pathological examination. This case suggests that when soft tissue mass is encountered, biopsy is always the gold standard and must not be missed.