Background/aim: For treatment of brain metastases, a patient's survival prognosis should be considered. Existing survival scores appear complex and require complete tumor staging. For many patients, a faster and simpler tool would be helpful.
Patients and methods: This retrospective study investigated the prognostic value of the number of pre-treatment symptoms plus eight other factors on survival of patients irradiated for brain metastases. Other factors included whole-brain radiotherapy (WBRT) regimen, age, gender, performance score, primary tumor type, number of brain metastases, extracranial metastases, and interval between cancer diagnosis and WBRT.
Results: The number of symptoms (p=0.002) and all other factors were significantly associated with survival on univariate analyses. On multivariate analysis, all factors but the number of symptoms (p=0.47) and primary tumor type (p=0.48) were significant.
Conclusion: Since the number of symptoms was not an independent predictor of survival, it cannot replace existing scoring tools and may only serve for orientation.
Keywords: Brain metastases; pre-treatment symptoms; survival prognosis; whole-brain radiotherapy.
Copyright© 2019, International Institute of Anticancer Research (Dr. George J. Delinasios), All rights reserved.