For a study, it was determined that Glioblastoma surgery aimed to achieve maximum resection while maintaining functional integrity. For surgical decision-making, there were no standards, and prior research shows that therapy varies. These flaws reflected the need to assess bigger populations from various care teams. The study’s authors employed probability maps to measure and compare surgical decision-making for glioblastoma patients by 12 neurosurgeon teams across the brain. All adult patients who had their first glioblastoma surgery in 2012–2013 and were treated by one of the 12 participating neurosurgical teams were included in the study. Each team created voxel-wise probability maps of tumor localization, biopsy, and resection to discover and compare patient treatment variances. Researchers examined patients’ functional outcomes and survival in brain areas with differing biopsy and resection results amongst teams.
The study included 1,087 patients, 363 of whom had a biopsy and 724 had a resection. Biopsy and resection decisions were broadly consistent across teams, establishing benchmarks for glioblastoma resection and biopsy likelihood maps. Differences in biopsy rates were discovered for the right superior frontal gyrus, indicating that biopsy decisions differed. There were differences in resection rates for the left superior parietal lobule, indicating that resection decisions differed. Glioblastoma surgery probability maps allowed for recording clinical practice decisions and revealed that teams frequently agreed to biopsy the region. However, treatment variances reflecting clinical problems were noticed and targeted using the probability maps, which could be valuable for quality-of-care conversations between surgical teams for glioblastoma patients.
Reference:thejns.org/view/journals/j-neurosurg/136/1/article-p45.xml
