Extended adjuvant temozolamide as prognostic factor of longer overall and progression-free survival in glioblastoma multiforme

Can Extended Chemotherapy Improve Glioblastoma Outcomes? A Retrospective Analysis of Survival in Real-World Patients

“…In the Stupp trial, median PFS was 6.9 months and median OS was 14.6 months [ 6 ]. Data from other retrospective series and clinical trials report significant variations in OS and PFS of GBM patients, ranging from 4 to 20 months for PFS and 12 to 28 months for OS [ 3 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 18 , 19 ]. This high variability of retrospective data can be explained by geographical and regional differences in terms of GBM management and the inherent patient selection bias; also, more recent database analyses usually report better survival compared to older reports.…”

“…The authors identified 213 GBM patients and reported a median OS of 15 months and a median PFS of 8 months, with longer OS for patients with a good performance status (ECOG = 0) that underwent gross tumor resection and received adjuvant TMZ beyond six cycles. The authors found that the maximum benefit on OS was noted after more than twelve cycles of TMZ [ 18 ]. Another retrospective analysis published by Huang et al [ 20 ] compared patients that received six cycles of adjuvant TMZ (group S) to those that received extended TMZ (group E) and found a median PFS of 15 months in group S and 20.1 months in group E, results which are similar to ours (14 months in the six cycle TMZ group and 20 months in the extended TMZ group).…”