Impact of a Structured Educational Intervention on Primary Care Physicians’ Knowledge of Soft Tissue Sarcomas: A Multicenter Quasi-Experimental Study

Background: Soft tissue sarcomas (STS) are rare malignant tumors characterized by diagnostic complexity, low incidence, and frequent diagnostic delay. Primary care physicians are often the first professionals to assess patients with suspicious masses, yet important gaps in sarcoma-related knowledge have been reported. This study evaluated the impact of a multidisciplinary educational intervention on primary care physicians’ knowledge of STS. Methods: A multicenter single-group quasi-experimental pre-post study without a control group was conducted in Spain. Forty-two primary care physicians and Family and Community Medicine residents who voluntarily agreed to participate attended an in-person workshop delivered by a family physician, an oncologist, and a pathologist. Knowledge was assessed before and after the intervention using a structured questionnaire. Descriptive and inferential analyses were performed, including correction for multiple comparisons. Results: Forty-two participants completed both assessments. Self-perceived knowledge improved consistently across all 36 items, and these differences remained significant after correction for multiple comparisons (all p-adj < 0.005). Effect sizes were large overall (r = 0.48–0.84), and in most domains more than 80% of participants showed improvement. The most marked changes were seen in follow-up protocols (r = 0.84), symptom recognition (r = 0.84), and epidemiological knowledge (r = 0.83). By contrast, the objective knowledge items did not retain statistical significance after FDR correction, mainly because baseline performance was already high. Still, knowledge of disease progression associated with diagnostic delay increased from 84.2% to 100%. Conclusions: In this uncontrolled pre–post study, a brief multidisciplinary educational intervention was associated with improvements in primary care physicians’ self-perceived knowledge of STS, whereas no significant changes were detected in objective knowledge after correction for multiple comparisons. Because the study lacked a control group and long-term follow-up, these findings should be regarded as preliminary and require confirmation in controlled studies.