[Combined treatment of malignant gliomas]

A controlled study of 226 age-matched patients with histologically proven grade 3 and 4 supratentorial gliomas with maximum feasible tumour resection, postoperative Karnofsky performance over 50 and minimum survival of 8 weeks compares the results of supportive care (45 cases), high-dose irradiation of 40 to 66 Gy (59 cases), COMP protocol (CCNU, procarbazine, vincristine, methotrexate, prednisone in 15 day cycles-42 cases) and simultaneous irradiation and COMP chemotherapy (80 cases including 30 survivors). Median recurrent-free intervals in the treatment groups (7 to 11.7 months) were significantly longer than after supportive care (4.4 months). Median survival with supportive care (6.7 months) was significantly shorter than after radiation or COMP treatment (11.7 and 12.3 months) and 14.9 to over 19.9 months with combined treatment, where the two-year survival rates were 33 and 67% (for survivors), and the 3-year survival rates 13 to 30%. Toxic side effects of multimodality treatment were more frequent than after chemotherapy. In addition to space-occupying intracranial cysts often simulating tumour recurrence (12%) and rare radiation necrosis, about 15% of long-term survivors developed progressive intellectual dysfunction with brain atrophy, in the absence of tumour regrowth. Despite some promising results of multimodality approaches towards the management of malignant supratentorial gliomas, the overall results are unsatisfactory and need further optimization.