Prognostic factors in patients with disseminated gastrointestinal stromal tumors

Abstract

The main method of treatment of patients with metastatic GIST is targeted therapy using tyrosine kinase inhibitors in contrast to localized forms of the disease. The efficiency and the duration of targeted therapy efficiency are the main prognostic factors in patients with metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST). Targeted therapy was ineffective among patients with the median survival of only 12-19 months, whereas in cases of effective targeted therapy the median survival was incomparably higher - 60-72 months. The main prognostic factors in patients with primary localized gastrointestinal stromal tumors are: the size of the primary tumor, mitotic index, the localization of tumors, mutation status and morphological characteristics of GIST. Taking into consideration that the main method of treatment in patients with disseminated GIST is drug therapy, the predictive values of several mentioned factors have lost the value, but other factors such as mutation status, morphological characteristics, the number and size of tumors and the localization of metastatic nodes have become more important.

Keywords

• kit
• pdgfra
• gastrointestinal stromal tumors
• targeted therapy
• tyrosine kinase inhibitors
• kit
• pdgfra
• wild type
• imatinib
• sunitinib
• regorafenib