Abstract
Since immunohistochemical procedures started to be used in the field of tumor pathology, they have been actively applied to the study of soft tissue tumors as techniques which remove much of the difficulty involved in histological diagnosis. A number of reports are available to show that these procedures have successfully yielded objective findings which allow for diagnostic agreement in many cases. Another opinion is that what is most important in the diagnosis of soft tissue tumors is an accurate determination of the morphological characteristics, making it doubtful that immunostaining would be performed unnecessarily because the accurate determination of morphological characteristics allows for the diagnosis of almost all soft tissue tumors. Clearly, the point that it is important to determine morphological characteristics is quite right. It is also a fact that many soft tissue tumors can be diagnosed without immunostaining. However, there are also a large number of patients for whom definite diagnosis can be made only after immunostaining and in whom reconfirmation by immunostaining is needed before a final diagnosis is made.
