Medicina (Jul 2024)
Combined Statistical Analysis of Glioblastoma Outcomes—A Neurosurgical Single-Institution Retrospective Study
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Notwithstanding the major progress in the management of cancerous diseases in the last few decades, glioblastoma (GBM) remains the most aggressive brain malignancy, with a dismal prognosis, mainly due to treatment resistance and tumoral recurrence. In order to diagnose this disease and establish the optimal therapeutic approach to it, a standard tissue biopsy or a liquid biopsy can be performed, although the latter is currently less common. To date, both tissue and liquid biopsy have yielded numerous biomarkers that predict the evolution and response to treatment in GBM. However, despite all such efforts, GBM has the shortest recorded survival rates of all the primary brain malignancies. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively reviewed patients with a confirmed histopathological diagnosis of glioblastoma between June 2011 and June 2023. All the patients were treated in the Third Neurosurgical Department of the Clinical Emergency Hospital “Bagdasar-Arseni” in Bucharest, and their outcomes were analyzed and presented accordingly. Results: Out of 518 patients in our study, 222 (42.8%) were women and 296 (57.14%) were men. The most common clinical manifestations were headaches and limb paralysis, while the most frequent tumor locations were the frontal and temporal lobes. The survival rates were prolonged in patients younger than 60 years of age, in patients with gross total tumoral resection and less than 30% tumoral necrosis, as well as in those who underwent adjuvant radiotherapy. Conclusions: Despite significant advancements in relation to cancer diseases, GBM is still a field of great interest for research and in great need of new therapeutic approaches. Although the multimodal therapeutic approach can improve the prognosis, the survival rates are still short and the recurrences are constant.
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