Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To report a case series of patients with high-grade musculoskeletal sarcomas whose biopsies of fresh specimens yielded positive Becton Dickinson ProbeTec tests, in addition to confirming diagnoses of high-grade sarcomas. METHODS: Fresh biopsies of high-grade musculoskeletal sarcomas were subjected to ProbeTec tests. RESULTS: The biopsies of three Chinese patients aged 65, 49 and 78 years with high-grade musculoskeletal sarcomas had positive Becton Dickinson ProbeTec tests. These patients' overall clinical pictures were not consistent with active tuberculous infections, which suggested that the ProbeTec test results were false-positives. The reason for this is not known but it is postulated that there is homology between the primers used for the ProbeTec test and the molecular properties of high-grade sarcomas. CONCLUSION: With the increasing use of the ProbeTec test in clinical practice, fellow surgeons and pathologists are encouraged to be aware of this phenomenon.