A team of researchers investigated how best to monitor brain tumors. The article is the work of a major collaboration of UK experts and stakeholders who met to discuss the value of routine imaging of brain tumor patients to evaluate their tumor treatment response, known as “interim images”.
The results of the study were published in the open access journal Frontiers in Oncology.
Their judgment: there is little evidence to support the current practice. However, the article also discusses how future research could determine and increase the value of interim images by assessing its costs and how it will affect patients’ quality of life, treatment and survival.
Medical staff use brain scans at preset times to determine if a brain tumor patient is undergoing treatment, but the frequency of a scan can range from every few weeks to every few months. Different countries and hospitals use different approaches, but which is the best approach and is any of this based on science?
It is important that things are right. Scanning someone enough could lead doctors to miss the signs that a patient needs further treatment. On the other hand, scanning someone is too inconvenient and inconvenient for both patients and medical staff, and can cause patient anxiety, especially if the results of the scan are not clear.
Patient scanning is also expensive, and with limited budgets, healthcare facilities need to use their facilities as cost-effectively as possible. Most interim imaging aims to detect an increase in tumor size, but tumors grow differently in different patients, which sometimes makes it difficult to draw concrete conclusions from interim image results. Would patients be better off getting scans just if they have new symptoms?
A group of experts and other stakeholders met to discuss these issues in London in 2019. The group was diverse and included many people with an interest in these issues. “Charitable representatives, neuro-oncologists, neuro-surgeons, neuro-radiologists, neuro-psychologists, experimenters, health economists, data scientists, and the imaging industry were all represented,” said Dr. Thomas Booth from King’s College London and the lead author of the article. Their findings are presented in this latest position statement.
The group considered the evidence behind current transitional imaging practices in the UK. “We have found that there is little evidence to support the image timetables currently in use and that the status quo is no more than an opinion considered, “said Professor Michael Jenkinson of Liverpool University, and senior author of the article.
So how can we determine whether interim images are valuable? Meeting participants also discussed a number of study methods that may shed light on the most important factors – patient quality of life, patient survival, and cost-effectiveness. However, this is not without its challenges.
“The complexity of treatment and the rarity of brain tumors mean that solutions outside of‘ randomized controlled trials ’are needed on their own to get the necessary evidence,” Booth said. “We recommend a range of incremental research solutions. “
These include economic and statistical analyzes, studies to measure patient perceptions and quality of life as they go through interim images, and even machine learning techniques to more accurately predict obtain about the value of interim images from large datasets. Future focused research is crucial in evaluating and increasing the potential of interim images, and this article paves the way.
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This story was published from a wire group group with no text changes.
