Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Publication Date

5-2-2024

Journal

Nature Communications

Abstract

With improvements in survival for patients with metastatic cancer, long-term local control of brain metastases has become an increasingly important clinical priority. While consensus guidelines recommend surgery followed by stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) for lesions >3 cm, smaller lesions (≤3 cm) treated with SRS alone elicit variable responses. To determine factors influencing this variable response to SRS, we analyzed outcomes of brain metastases ≤3 cm diameter in patients with no prior systemic therapy treated with frame-based single-fraction SRS. Following SRS, 259 out of 1733 (15%) treated lesions demonstrated MRI findings concerning for local treatment failure (LTF), of which 202 /1733 (12%) demonstrated LTF and 54/1733 (3%) had an adverse radiation effect. Multivariate analysis demonstrated tumor size (>1.5 cm) and melanoma histology were associated with higher LTF rates. Our results demonstrate that brain metastases ≤3 cm are not uniformly responsive to SRS and suggest that prospective studies to evaluate the effect of SRS alone or in combination with surgery on brain metastases ≤3 cm matched by tumor size and histology are warranted. These studies will help establish multi-disciplinary treatment guidelines that improve local control while minimizing radiation necrosis during treatment of brain metastasis ≤3 cm.

Keywords

Radiosurgery, Humans, Brain Neoplasms, Male, Female, Middle Aged, Aged, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Melanoma, Adult, Treatment Outcome, Tumor Burden, Aged, 80 and over, Treatment Failure, Retrospective Studies, Oncology, CNS cancer

DOI

10.1038/s41467-024-47998-8

PMID

38697991

PMCID

PMC11066027

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

May 2024

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Post-print

Published Open-Access

yes

Download

Plum Print visual indicator of research metrics
PlumX Metrics
  • Citations
    • Citation Indexes: 5
  • Usage
    • Downloads: 14
    • Abstract Views: 3
  • Captures
    • Readers: 15
  • Mentions
    • News Mentions: 5
see details

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.