Credit: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
“We’ve known that certain independent factors, such as age at diagnosis, amount of residual tumor after surgery, and the patient’s functional status are useful in predicting outcomes in patients with glioblastoma multiforme, but multifocal disease at time of onset has rarely been examined in this context. Two small previous studies were contradictory. Our study appears to confirm observations that disease in patients with more than one lesion is particularly challenging and that these patients tend to have worse outcomes. Matched survival analysis demonstrated that multifocal disease is a strong and negative independent prognostic factor,” said Chirag G. Patil, MD, director of the Center for Neurosurgical Outcomes Research in the Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.