Trattamento dei tumori cerebrali maligni con Gliasite: Nostra esperienza preliminare

Primary therapy for high grade gliomas has shown that 80% of patients experience tumor recurrence within 2 cm of the resection margin in spite of adjuvant radiotherapy and chemotherapy. At the time of recurrence, treatment options are often limited and the neurological toxicity is often high. The Gliasite Radiation Therapy System is an intracavitary law dose rate brachytherapy device for the treatment of recurrent malignant gliomas. This study reports on our experience with this kind of method on 10 patients with recurrent high grade gliomas. The mean radiation dose delivered was 46,5 Gy (range 45-60 Gy) to an average depth of 1 cm. There -were no cases of PET-CT documented or symptomatic radiation necrosis, and mild side effects post lotrex infusion were controlled with drug therapy. At the time of this analysis (mean follow up: 6,5 months, range 1-12 months), all the patients are still alive. These are preliminary data that we must confirm on a large number of patients and with a longer follow up period, with more information on the progression of symptom-free survival and on overall survival. Our preliminary results confirm that brachytherapy treatment with Gliasite on a selective group of patients improves the quality of life and reduces the side effects of radiation, contrary to external beam radiotherapy