Case-control study of long-term survivors of glioblastoma

Abstract

e13021 Background: Survival of patients with glioblastoma (GBM) remains poor. However, a small percentage of GBM patients live ≥ 3 years. Relatively little is known about the patterns of care and outcomes of these long term survivors relative to GBM patients with standard or short-term survival. Methods: Nested case-control study of long term survivors (≥ 36 months), short term survivors (≤ 6 months) and standard survivors (> 6 months but < 36 months). Pathology was confirmed in all study subjects by a single neuropathologist. Each long term survivor (LTS) was matched to a short term survivor (STS) and 3 standard survivors (SS) by the well-established prognostic factors, age and postoperative Karnofsky Performance Status. Clinical characteristics, treatment regimens and outcomes were reviewed. Conditional logistic regression models were used to assess potential associations between baseline factors and the probability of long or short term survival. Results: Matching yielded 23 LTS with 23 STS and 69 SS. Patient characteristics are summarized in the table below. Conclusions: Controlling for the well-established prognostic factors of age and performance status, long-term GBM survivors differed significantly from short-term GBM survivors based on tumor location and extent of resection. However, there were no significant differences in baseline factors between long-term survivors versus standard survivors in this analysis. Short-term GBM survivors differed from standard survivors by tumor location and extent of resection. Molecular factors are being assessed in these groups as potential contributors to these survival differences. [Table: see text] [Table: see text]