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| |  ASTRO MEETING: Radiation Used After Surgery Keeps Brain Cancer From Returning PHOENIX, AZ – Oct. 28, 1998 -- In a new study, 82 percent of patients with a single site of metastatic brain tumour, who had surgery and postoperative radiation, did not have a recurrence of their brain cancer. This number compared to 30 percent of those not receiving post-operative radiation. The study will be presented today at the annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology in Phoenix, AZ. Everyone who participated in the study had surgery to remove their isolated brain metastasis. All patients had MRI of the head two to five days after surgery to rule out other lesions and to confirm the brain was free of visible cancer. One-half of the study patients received radiation to the brain as part of the postoperative plan. The other half did not receive this treatment. Both groups received MRI scans at three-month intervals for the first year following treatment and every six months thereafter. For patients who participated in the postoperative irradiation, therapy began within 28 days after surgery. Patients received whole brain radiotherapy over five and one-half weeks. In addition to decreasing the brain tumour recurrence rate, the patients in the radiotherapy group were much less likely to die of neurologic causes than the patients in the observation group. The study opened in September of 1989 and concluded in 1997 according to William Regine, M.D. associate professor of radiation medicine, and associate director of clinical research for the Markey Cancer Center at University of Kentucky in Lexington. This research is a follow-up to Dr. Roy Patchell's 1990 study that determined brain surgery was beneficial. Prior to the 1990 study, physicians questioned whether surgery was of value in treating this kind of brain cancer.
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