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Malignant gliomas in older adults with poor
prognostic signs. Getting nowhere, and taking a long time to do it
Halperin EC
Department of Radiation Oncology, Duke University Medical Center,
Durham, North Carolina, USA.
The median survival time of adults with supratentorial malignant glioma treated
in clinical studies with surgery, 6 weeks of external-beam radiotherapy, and
carmustine (BiCNU) is approximately 1 year.
This poor survival time is almost certainly optimistic, since only a select
subgroup of patients end up participating in clinical trials--ie, those with a
better prognosis.
For elderly patients and/or those with poor functional status, median survival
time ranges from 16 to 40 weeks.
A regimen of surgery plus 2 to 3 weeks of radiotherapy appears to achieve a
survival duration equivalent to that of long courses of chemoradiotherapy at
less cost in time and money, and perhaps with less caregiver stress.
Since the incidence of brain tumors in the elderly is rising and the size of the
elderly population is increasing, it is appropriate to investigate the role of
less aggressive therapy for what will be a growing number of malignant glioma
patients with a poor prognosis.
PMID: 7669516 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=7669516&dopt=Abstract
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