Clinical observation of temozolomide combined with radiotherapy for 18 cases of newly diagnosed high grade gliomas / 中国癌症杂志

ABSTRACT

Background and purpose:The prognosis of high grade gliomas remains poor, and multidisciplinary treatment strategy has been much investigated recently. This study was to explore the efficacy of Temozolomide as first-line treatment combined with radiotherapy and followed by adjuvant chemotherapy for the treatment of newly diagnosed high grade gliomas. Methods:18 patients who had been pathologically proven to be high grade gliomas were enrolled into the study. The patients received 40 Gy/20fractions for the whole brain and followed by 20Gy/10fractions as a boost to tumor bed. All of the patients were given daily oral temozolomide 75mg/ m2 during radiotherapy. 4 weeks after radiotherapy, all of the patients received 6 cycles of Temozolomide, each cycle lasted 5 days with 28 days interval between each cycles. 150 mg/m2 of temozolomide was given for the first cycle for five days,followd by 200 mg/m2 of drug for the rest of the cycles if no significant drug related toxicities were observed. Results:Median follow-up was 12.5 months, 11 cases had either recurrence or progression, 5 of them died from the disease. The median time for disease progression-free survival was 9.8 months (95% CI, 6.1~9.8months), the median time for overall survival was 14 months (95% CI, 8.5 ~ 19.5months), 1-year overall survival rate was 55.6% ,6-month progression-free survival rate was 81.8%. there were no severe temozolomide related toxicities. Conclusion: Concurrent temozolomide with radiotherapy and followed by 6 cycles of temozolomide in the treatment of high grade gliomas had better clinical efficacy, the patients tolerated the strategy well and no severe toxicities were observed.