Specialized multidisciplinary care improves ALS survival in Belgium: a population-based retrospective study

Abstract

ALS is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by loss of motor neurons, resulting in progressive weakness and wasting of muscles. The average survival time is 2–5 years, mostly due to respiratory failure. Since current therapies can prolong survival time by only a few months, multidisciplinary care remains the cornerstone of the management of ALS. At the ALS Expert Centre of University Hospitals Leuven, a large proportion of Belgian ALS patients are seen for diagnosis and a significant number is also in follow-up with the multidisciplinary team. In this retrospective study, we compared the outcome of incident patients who were in follow-up at our site with patients who were not in follow-up. We included 659 patients of which 557 (84.5%) received specialized care at the ALS Expert Centre. After adjusting for clinically relevant prognostic parameters, multidisciplinary follow-up significantly prolonged survival (p = 0.004; HR = 0.683; CI 95% [0.528 − 0.884]). This increase in survival is mainly driven by patients with spinal onset (p = 0.035; HR = 0.746; CI 95% [0.568 − 0.980]), since no significant increased survival time was observed in patients with bulbar onset (p = 0.28; HR = 0.778; CI 95% [0.495 − 1.223]). These data confirm that multidisciplinary follow-up contributes to a better outcome of patients, emphasizing the importance of multidisciplinary specialized care in ALS.