Article
One year with Optune in Austria: First report on clinical experiences
Search Medline for
Authors
-
Christian Freyschlag
- Universitätsklinik für Neurochirurgie, Medizinische Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
-
Johannes Kerschbaumer
- Universitätsklinik für Neurochirurgie, Innsbruck, Austria
-
Daniel Pinggera
- Neurochirurgie Innsbruck, Medizinische Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
-
Claudius Thomé
- A.ö. Landeskrankenhaus - Universitätskliniken Innsbruck, Tirol Kliniken GmbH, Universitätsklinik für Neurochirurgie, Innsbruck, Austria
| Published: | June 9, 2017 |
|---|
Outline
Text
Objective: Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) consist of intermediate frequency alternating electric fields that are delivered through 4 transducer arrays, directly placed on the shaved scalp. Optune TTF treatment is an established, non-invasive antimitotic therapy for patients with newly diagnosed or recurrent glioblastoma (GBM). Treatment efficacy was evaluated in the EF-14 trial, showing significant improvement of both, overall and progression free survival. This is the first report on clinical experiences with Optune in Austria (Start: February 2016, N=11 patients). All patients received a prescription in our department, the only certified TTF treatment center in Austria.
Results: We treated newly diagnosed (N=8) and recurrent GBM patients (N=3). Our patient population included female (N=4) and male (N=7) patients with an mean age of 42 years (range 17-69 years) at the date of prescription. The mean treatment time was 3,4 months (range 2 weeks - 6 months). The disease was rated stable in 5 patients with an mean treatment time of 82,06% daily. Three patients (27 %) showed progressive disease, one with a surgically resectable recurrence, the other patient with a diffuse progression of the disease. With regards to the side effects we were faced with mild to moderate skin irritation (RTOG 0-1) in 2 patients, but those could be treated by the use of local steroid application and did not cause significant treatment interruption in all but one patient. We noticed that patients need approximately 4 weeks to get used to the therapy. We perform regular follow-up visits including evaluation of patient compliance. With regards to the compliance rate and due to the patient’s feedback we were able to show that patients mostly accept this new treatment approach.
Conclusion: TTF is generally an accepted and efficacious treatment for GBM. The promising results of the preterm analysis of EF-14 were recently confirmed in the final analysis. Our experiences with TTF are widely positive with great acceptance by the patients, however, the short treatment time does not allow reliable outcome analysis.
