HRQoL in patients with GBM: The impact of tumor treating fields.

Abstract

e24049 Background: Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common malignant glioma with a dismal prognosis. Patients experience a range of progressively worsening symptoms, including headaches, nausea, seizures, and cognitive deficits throughout their disease course. Initial treatment for newly diagnosed patients consists of maximal safe surgical resection followed by fractionated radiation treatment with concomitant temozolomide. Presently, there are two approved adjuvant treatment modalities following chemoradiation: temozolomide and tumor-treating fields (TTFields). In this poster, we explore the impact of TTFields on the quality of life, assessed through health-related quality of life (HRQoL), in patients with GBM. Methods: Using PubMed, Medline-indexed articles were collected using this structured query: Glioblastoma[MeSH] AND (("Electric Stimulation Therapy*"[MeSH]) OR ("Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation*"[MeSH]) OR "Tumor Treating Fields" OR "TTF") NOT "RAT" This yielded 233 results before the search date (2023). Collected sources were uploaded to Covidence to allow for multi-reviewer screening, review, and extraction. For completeness, limited forward and back citations using the ResearchRabbit tool and limited addition of non-Medline indexed articles via unstructured query yielded four additional results. Sources were filtered by study type and included/excluded based on accessibility, sample population, design, outcome measures, and interventions. Five randomized control studies remained. From this subset, bias, effect size, I2-index, and forest analysis with random effect model estimation were calculated. Results: Data analysis showed that TTFields therapy has demonstrated associations with increased progression-free survival and enhanced overall survival rates without negative effects on HRQoL. Some patients have reported improvement in mobility, self-care, and carrying out regular activities. One notable side effect observed in these patients was increased skin itchiness, which was expected due to the use of transducer arrays. Conclusions: This project identified a research gap in standardizing the assessment of quality of life in patients treated with TTFields. A significant limitation in research on TTFields is an overall lack of HRQoL data, often due to patients failing to follow-up with surveys. Future research should prioritize patient follow-up to obtain more comprehensive and precise longitudinal data on HRQoL while considering disease and treatment characteristics.