KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The study aimed to investigate the efficacy of WBRT + SIB in treating BM from BC.
- The key outcomes of the study were to evaluate PFS and OS.
- Researchers observed that WBRT + SIB improved tumor control and clinical outcomes in pts with BC with BM.
The combined effect of whole-brain radiation therapy (WBRT) and simultaneous integrated boost (SIB) in breast cancers (BC) related – brain metastasis (BM) has not been clearly established in recent research works.
Hongyan Zhang and the team conducted a retrospective study reviewing consecutive patients (pts) with BC who developed BM and were treated with hypofractionated radiation therapy + WBRT using intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT)-SIB approaches.
The key patient inclusion criteria were: (1) age 18 years or older; (2) female pts with pathologically confirmed invasive ductal carcinoma or invasive lobular carcinoma of the breast; (3) BM diagnosed by imaging or pathology; (4) performance status score of 2 or less; (5) life expectancy of at least 3 months; (6) adequate hematological and organ function; (7) completion of WBRT + SIB to brain lesions using SIB-IMRT approaches, with or without systemic treatment. The clinical outcomes, prognostic factors, and patterns of treatment failure were analyzed.
Results indicated that 27 pts were eligible for this analysis. Of those, 4 (14.8%) pts achieved a clinically complete response, and 14 (51.9%) pts had a partial response to the brain lesions. Another 9 pts were not considered for brain tumor response evaluation.
The median brain progression-free survival (PFS) was 8.60 (95% CI [6.43-13.33]) months, and the median overall survival (OS) was 16.8 (95% CI [13.3-27.7]) months. About 3 pts had in-field failure, 5 pts had out-field failure, and 2 pts had both in-field and out-field failure.
The study concluded that WBRT + SIB led to enhanced tumor control and clinical outcomes in BC pts with BM.
This study was supported by the Science and Technology Innovation Cultivation Fund for Clinical Research Project from Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University (No. lcyf202213).
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39011372/
Zhang H, Wu Q, Li L, et al. (2024). “Whole-brain radiation therapy plus simultaneous integrated boost for brain metastases from breast cancers.” PeerJ. 2024 Jul 12;12:e17696. doi: 10.7717/peerj.17696. PMID: 39011372; PMCID: PMC11248998.
