The Predictive and Diagnostic Potential of Symptoms for Glioblastoma Patient Survival

Abstract PurposeGlioblastoma is a devastating malignancy with a dismal survival rate and median survival time of 14 months. Currently, the biomarkers for glioblastoma are mostly molecular and include EGFRvIII, ATRX, PTEN, IDH1, MGMT, and others. These prognostic tumor biomarkers are obtained through a surgical biopsy and thus not easily attainable. Clinicians would benefit from a robust, non-invasive, and readily available indicator for early diagnosis and accurate prognostication for glioblastoma patients. MethodsIn this study, we assessed whether specific patient symptoms could provide early diagnosis of glioblastoma. Further, if any patient symptomatology would provide clinicians with the ability to prognosticate patient survival more accurately. We retrospectively reviewed the clinical data for 218 patients. We determined whether symptoms including headache, weakness, seizure, memory loss/confusion, visual changes, speech changes, and loss of consciousness led to a patient being diagnosed earlier and if any of these symptoms predicted a diminished patient survival. ResultsOur study determined that weakness and memory loss/confusion were symptoms that predicted diminished survival, and weakness alone was the symptom that predicted earlier diagnosis. Conclusion: This study further elucidates the complexities of glioblastoma and provides clinicians with more data for their patients when discussing prognostication after diagnosis of glioblastoma.