Treatment of glioblastoma multiforme in elderly patients. Clinico-therapeutic remarks in 22 patients older than 80 years

We report our remarks on 22 patients, 80 years of age and older, who were treated for glioblastoma multiforme. The 16 patients who underwent a multimodality treatment (surgery + radiotherapy + chemotherapy) had an average survival of 16.7 months versus the 5.8 months of the 8 patients treated with biopsy followed by radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy (log-rank test, P <0.001). Moreover, we point out the importance of MGMT hypermethylation as a significant prognostic factor: the 9 patients with nonmethylated MGMT had a mean survival of 7.7 months vs 17.9 months of the 13 patients with the MGMT promoter methylated (log-rank test. P = 0.0006). Several studies have pointed out age as an important negative factor for the outcome of elderly patients affected by glioblastoma multiforme. Elderly patients with a diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme are thus generally excluded from clinical trials of treatment for the neoplasm, because it is a common opinion that the prognosis for such patients is particularly poor. On the contrary, according to our clinical and surgical experience, we firmly believe that patients older than 80 years with a histologically proven diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme and in good health conditions (Karnofsky performance status >60) should be treated in the same way as younger patients.