The fashion world is mourning for Virgil Abloh, designer, stylist and creative director of the men’s line of Louis Vuitton, who died yesterday at the age of 41. The news came from his social profiles: according to what was reported, the cause of death is a very rare tumor, called angiosarcoma, who had been diagnosed two years ago. What kind of disease is it?
What is Angiosarcoma
Angiosarcoma is part of soft tissue sarcomas, neoplasms that develop from mesenchymal cells. Angiosarcomas, in particular, are so called because they affect blood vessels and can appear anywhere in the body. When they develop around or inside the heart they are called ‘paracardiacs’. The average age of onset is approximately 50 years.
“The diagnosis of these tumors is always very difficult, they are extremely rare, with an incidence of less than one million inhabitants, and are often discovered when they are already in an advanced stage,” he explains. Emanuela Palmerini of the Department of Osteoncology, Sarcomas of bone and soft tissues and Innovative Therapies of the Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute of Bologna: “They do not give specific symptoms but, depending on where they develop, they can cause swelling, pain, breathing difficulties and arrhythmias. risk factors are not even known, except for breast angiosarcomas for those who have undergone radiotherapy for another tumor “.
How to cure
Surgery, when it is possible to perform it, is the treatment of first choice, and is aimed at completely removing the tumor. The decision must be multidisciplinary and depends on both the patient’s condition and the size and location of the lesion.
“Surgery is possible in cases where the disease is not advanced and has not metastasized”, underlines the oncologist: “In cases where angiosarcomas affect one of the heart valves, for example, this can be completely replaced. Clearly, the main problem with surgery of an angiosarcoma that develops around or inside the heart is not being able to widen the margins of the resection: the surgery is obviously more complex than it is to remove an angiosarcoma in the thigh. resorting to other strategies such as stereotaxic radiotherapy, and to drugs: both chemotherapies and molecularly targeted therapies are used, depending on the characteristics of the tumor “.
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I sarcomi
More than 80 subtypes of sarcomas are known, which take different names depending on the tissue they involve. They are divided into two broad categories: those of the bone and those of the soft parts, which affect muscles, nerves, cartilages, tendons, deep layers of the skin, adipose tissue and lymphatic and blood vessels. In most cases, soft tissue sarcomas are found in the limbs (about 60%) and the back of the abdomen (15%), while more rarely they affect the trunk (10%), the gastrointestinal and visceral organs (10 %), or the head and neck area (5%).
For treatment, it is essential to go to a center with a multidisciplinary team, made up of a surgeon, medical oncologist, radiotherapist and other specialists based on the type of sarcoma. Five-year survival for early-stage soft-tissue sarcomas is around 65%.
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