delay presented with Stage III/IV, compared with 45% in the <6-month group.Longer delays correlated positively with larger tumor size.15% were initially misdiagnosed as benign, resulting in 12% unplanned excisions.Conclusions: Extensive diagnostic delay-beginning at the first medical encounter-is strongly associated with increased tumor burden, advanced stage, and inappropriate early interventions.These findings highlight the need for improved symptom recognition across specialties, streamlined referral pathways to sarcoma centers, and public awareness regarding persistent or enlarging soft-tissue masses to reduce late presentations in low-resource systems.
Toropov et al. (Sun,) studied this question.