Improved Survival in Adult Patients with Low-grade Brain Tumors

Using clinical data collected over the past decade through a U.S. cancer registry, researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine demonstrated that significant improvements have been made in increasing the survival of adult patients with low-grade gliomas. The study suggests that the survival improvement is due to the development of more effective chemotherapies. Interestingly, the improved survival occurred despite a decreased use of radiation therapy at the time when low-grade glioma was first diagnosed. While many previous studies suggest that complete excision of low-grade gliomas are associated with longer patient survival, the latest study found that only about a third of U.S. patients underwent complete surgical resection. Notably, this number remained unchanged throughout the past decade. “The lack of improvement in surgical resection is likely limited by the availability of technologies, such as intra-operative MRI, to allow surgeons to perform maximal surgical resection,” said the chief of neurosurgery at UC San Diego Health. “The completion of an advanced surgical suite with an intra-operative MRI at Jacobs Medical Center in 2016 at UC San Diego Health will afford us an unprecedented opportunity to achieve maximal surgical resection of low-grade glioma and set forth new surgical standards for the care of this patient population.” To read more about this study, click here.