QUALITY-OF-LIFE AND NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION FOR PATIENTS WITH MALIGNANT ASTROCYTOMAS - RTOG-91-14

With increasingly aggressive neurosurgical and radiation therapy modal ities (gamma knife, external beam stereotactic radiation and interstit ial brachytherapy with or without hyperthermia) offered to patients wi th malignant astrocytomas (MA), increasing national demand for medical outcome studies and rising health care costs amidst public, business, and governmental debate to cut spending, we as physicians are obligat ed to continue our research to find effective treatments for malignant astrocytoma (MA) and a cost-effective means to study their impact upo n the patient's quality of life (QOL). Purpose: We report data that wa s collected within the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) on 126 patients with MA who were enrolled in RTOG 91-14, This study was under taken to prospectively test the feasibility of performing quality of l ife (QOL) and neuropsychological evaluation (NPE) and collecting this data within the RTOG. Results: The NPE and QOL parameters that were us ed in this study are cost effective. They are not only much cheaper th an formal cognitive and memory testing, but also provide additional in formation regarding the patients' day to day functional abilities that are not provided by the current routinely used means, such as KPS. Th e Mini-Mental Status Exam (MMSE) provides greater sensitivity to patie nts' differences in neurological status and may be preferable to NFS a s an eligibility criteria. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Inc.