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Optimal Therapies for Newly Diagnosed Elderly Patients with Glioblastoma

  • Neuro-oncology (GJ Lesser, Section Editor)
  • Published:
Current Treatment Options in Oncology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Opinion statement

Newly diagnosed elderly patients (age > 65–70 years) with glioblastoma should be treated with a patient-centred approach by a multi-disciplinary team. Chronological age alone should not be considered as a contraindication to treatment with maximal safe surgical resection. A 3-week course of adjuvant radiation and chemotherapy is appropriate in selected elderly patients with favourable Karnofsky performance status (KPS) who cannot tolerate a longer 6-week course of fractionated radiotherapy. The presence or absence of 06-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) promoter methylation can be used to guide clinical decision-making as both prognostic and predictive biomarkers. This review provides an update and summary of the available evidence for treating newly diagnosed elderly patients with glioblastoma.

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Acknowledgements

SI and JP are supported by the Crolla Family Chair in Brain Tumour Research.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Neurology, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, 2075 Bayview Avenue, Toronto, ON, M4N 3M5, Canada

    Sarah Ironside MD & James R. Perry MD

  2. Odette Cancer Centre, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Sarah Ironside MD, Arjun Sahgal MD, Claire Moroney MS, RN(EC) & James R. Perry MD

  3. Division of Neurosurgery, St. Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Sunit Das MD, PhD

  4. Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science of St. Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Sunit Das MD, PhD

  5. Arthur and Sonia Labatt Brain Tumour Research Centre, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Sunit Das MD, PhD

  6. Department of Radiation Oncology, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Arjun Sahgal MD

  7. Division of Neurosurgery, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Todd Mainprize MD

Authors
  1. Sarah Ironside MD
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sarah Ironside MD.

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Conflict of Interest

Sarah Ironside declares that she has no conflict of interest.

Sunit Das declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Arjun Sahgal reports past educational seminars with Medtronic, Elekta AB, Accuray Inc. and Varian medical systems. He has received research grants from Elekta AB and travel accommodations/expenses from Medtronic, Elekta and Varian and also belongs to the Elekta MR Linac Research Consortium.

Claire Moroney declares that she has no conflict of interest.

Todd Mainprize declares that he has no conflict of interest.

James R. Perry declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Human and Animal Rights

All reported studies/experiments with human or animal subjects performed by the authors have been previously published and complied with all applicable ethical standards (including the Helsinki Declaration and its amendments, institutional/national research committee standards and international/national/institutional guidelines).

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Neuro-oncology

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Ironside, S., Das, S., Sahgal, A. et al. Optimal Therapies for Newly Diagnosed Elderly Patients with Glioblastoma. Curr. Treat. Options in Oncol. 18, 66 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11864-017-0508-7

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