Survival of high grade glioma patients depends on their age at diagnosis

Background: Although the prognosis for malignant gliomas is normally dismal, it's not infrequent in neurooncologist's experience to find cases with unusually prolonged survival. In order to understand what factors influence survival of high grade glioma patients, a cohort of 196 high (III-IV) grade glioma patients was investigated for possible association between (1) survival and age at diagnosis; (2) survival and micronuclei in tumor tissue; (3) survival and gender; (4) micronuclei in tumor tissue and age at diagnosis. Results: Patients diagnosed at an older age (>64 years) had a significantly higher hazard as compared to younger patients (≤64 years), indicating that older patients survived shorter. On the contrary, no association was found between survival and micronuclei or gender. Methods: Survival analysis was performed by the Cox' proportional hazards regression model. Conclusions: Age at diagnosis, together with other established prognostic factors such as histologic characteristics, extent of surgery and Karnofsky Performance Score may to a certain extent predict survival of high grade glioma patients.