Four out of fourteen patients (1, 2, 3 and 8) demonstrated an increase of at least 25% and 1.5 cc in hyperintense volume during radiation therapy. All of these patients were confirmed to have possible pseudoprogession or true progression by inspection and radiology report on post-treatment post-gadolinium MRI.
Patient 1 (Fig. 2), a 65 year old man, presented to radiation oncology with multifocal glioblastoma (IDH-1 mutation negative, MGMT nonhypermethylated) in the right temporal lobe after biopsy of a discrete lesion about 1 cm inferior to the axial slice shown in Fig. 2A. A tiny (~ 2 mm) area of equivocal T2 change was observed as shown, and this area was included in the 60 Gy CTV. Little change was observed in this area until about fraction 18 (late week 4), at which time rapid growth was seen until fraction 26 (week 6) when the size plateaued. No steroids were used at any time during the radiotherapy treatment. The observed findings during treatment were consistent with one-month post treatment diagnostic imaging (Fig. 2A, bottom two panels). Bevacizumab was added to temozolomide after the diagnostic MRI with dramatic improvement in MRI findings. The patient died of multi-focal glioblastoma, mostly out of the initial radiation therapy field, 24 months after biopsy.
Patient 2 (Fig. 3), a 47 year old man, underwent gross total resection of a right temporal glioblastoma (IDH-1 mutation negative, MGMT nonhypermethylated). On treatment planning MRI two weeks later a tiny area of enhancement without surrounding edema was observed in the right frontal lobe suspicious for multifocal disease and added to the 60 Gy CTV. Post-operative dexamethasone taper was stopped at fraction 1 and no further steroids were given during treatment. Similar to the pre-treatment T2 images, no change in the multi-focal area was visualized on the MRI-RT scans initially. Growth was identified on MRI-RT early in week 3 which accelerated through week 4 and 5 and plateaued in week 6. This area continued to progress and underwent resection about 6 months after completion of radiation. Pathology demonstrated only reactive changes and inflammation with no clear tumor. The patient went to hospice 20 months after initial resection due to additional foci of progression outside of the radiation therapy field.
Patient 8 (Fig. 4), a 59 year old man, underwent gross total resection of a right parietal glioblastoma (IDH-1 mutation negative, MGMT nonhypermethylated). Patient was tapered from dexamethasone 4 mg twice daily and maintained at 2 mg twice daily after the start of treatment due to left hand weakness. Significant growth of T2 hyperintensity was identified starting fraction 17 and progressing nearly linearly through fraction 30. Temozolomide chemotherapy was continued through currently 9 months of follow-up.
Among the four patients with 25% or more growth during treatment, we observed non-linear growth kinetics (Fig. 5). Specifically, three of the patients (numbers 1, 2, and 8) demonstrated little change during weeks 1–3 of radiotherapy followed by significant growth starting in week 4. Patient 3 had growth in the first week that plateaued during week 3. Another observation was that three of the patients (numbers 1, 2, and 3) had a plateau in growth during the last week of treatment or earlier, while patient 8 continued to grow through week 6. The bSSFP MRIs from the sixth week of treatment for all fourteen patients demonstrated similar T2-FLAIR abnormalities when compared to the patients’ diagnostic T2 MRIs post-treatment completion.
Nine of the fourteen patients are alive after finishing the chemoradiation treatment. Median follow-up was 19.1 months (minimum 6 months) with estimated survival of 23.9 months (Fig. 6). A non-significant difference in estimated survival is seen at 18 months (100% for patients with growth during treatment vs. 67% without, p = 0.45), which supports the likely pseudoprogression observed in these patients.
Regarding patients with more minor changes, one patient (patient 7 shown in Fig. 1) had a 23% decrease in bSSFP hyperintense volume beginning at fraction 18 (35.7 cc) trending nearly linearly to fraction 30 (29.0 cc). Patient 5 had a 15% increase in T2 hyperintense volume almost linearly starting at fraction 12 (23.5 cc) and plateauing after fraction 19 (26.8 cc). Patients 11 and 13 underwent gross total resections and the resection cavities were observed to shrink from 1.9 to 0.6 cc and 82.6 to 72 cc, respectively. All of these changes were also reported on diagnostic radiology report post-treatment. The remaining patients had less than 10% or 1.5 cc change of hyperintense volume throughout the treatment period.