Outcome of salvage treatment for recurrent glioblastoma

Most glioblastoma (GBM) cases recur within a year and almost all cases recur at some point. Standard treatment for recurrent GBM has not yet been established. We investigated the outcome of various salvage treatments for recurrent GBM. Retrospective analysis was undertaken in 144 patients who received salvage treatment at the time of first progression after maximum debulking surgery followed by concomitant chemoradiotherapy and adjuvant temozolomide (TMZ) chemotherapy. The median follow-up period was 18.2 months. We grouped these patients into five groups according to the salvage modalities: Gamma Knife radiosurgery (GKS) group (n = 29), TMZ group (n = 31), GKS+TMZ group (n = 28), reoperation group (n = 38) and “other treatment” group (n = 18). The median time to first progression from initial diagnosis was 8.8 months. The median overall survival (OS) of the five different treatment groups; GKS, TMZ, GKS+TMZ, reoperation, and “other treatment”, was 9.2, 5.6, 15.5, 13.2, and 8.0 months, respectively. Median progression-free survival (PFS) was 3.6, 2.3, 6.0, 4.3, and 2.6 months, respectively. Pairwise comparison of OS of the GKS+TMZ group with the other groups showed that the OS of the GKS+TMZ group was significantly better than all others except the reoperation group. Statistically significant prolongation of PFS was observed in the GKS+TMZ group compared with the TMZ group and the “other treatment” group. GKS followed by TMZ salvage treatment was a good prognostic factor for both PFS and OS in multivariate analysis. Retrospectively, GKS+TMZ as a salvage treatment, tended to provide a superior survival benefit at the time of recurrence.