Does Time between Imaging Diagnosis and Initiation of Radiotherapy Impact Survival after Whole-Brain Radiotherapy for Brain Metastases?

Table 1

Patient characteristics (𝑛=110): no significant difference in age, KPS, number of brain metastases, extracranial metastases, primary tumour control, DS-GPA and RPA classification, radiation dose, and time interval (𝑃=0.22 or more); significant difference: primary disease type (𝑃=0.03).

Parameter	Interval < 12 days	Interval ≥ 12 days
Median age, years	64	64
Median KPS	60	70
Median DS-GPA score (min. 0, max. 4 points)	1.0	1.0
Number of BM: 1 (%)	5	9
Number of BM: 2-3 (%)	17	16
Number of BM: >3 (%)	25	27
Extracranial metastases (%)	43	38
No extracranial metastases (%)	5	15
Uncontrolled primary tumour (%)	16	25
Controlled primary tumour (%)	31	28
DS-GPA class I versus II versus III versus IV (%)	2, 4, 9, 33	1, 5, 17, 30
RPA class I versus II versus III (%)	2, 20, 25	3, 26, 24
NSCLC, SCLC (%)	15, 8	32, 2
Breast, MM, and GI (%)	9, 3, 6	3, 4, 6
Kidney, others (%)	4, 2	4, 3
Total dose 20 Gy (%)	12	17
Total dose 30 Gy (%)	35	35
Simultaneous detection of BM and primary tumour (%)	8	17
Time interval to BM 1–12 months (%)	23	17
Time interval to BM 13–36 months (%)	7	9
Time interval to BM > 36 months (%)	9	8

KPS: Karnofsky performance status; BM: brain metastases; DS-GPA: diagnosis-specific graded prognostic assessment; NSCLC: nonsmall cell lung cancer; SCLC: small cell lung cancer; MM: malignant melanoma; GI: gastrointestinal primary tumour.