Multidisciplinary treatment is necessary in glioblastoma with extracerebral metastases

TL;DR

This paper discusses the rare case of a glioblastoma patient with extracerebral metastases and highlights the need for multidisciplinary treatment approaches.

Contribution

The paper presents a rare clinical case of glioblastoma with extracerebral metastases and emphasizes the importance of multidisciplinary treatment.

Findings

Extracerebral manifestations of glioblastoma are rare but require a multidisciplinary approach.

Multimodal treatment failed to control extracerebral metastases in the reported case.

Palliative strategies are emphasized for patients with multilocal extracerebral manifestations.

Abstract

While glioblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor in adults, extracerebral manifestations are very rare in this highly aggressive disease with poor prognosis.

We conducted a systematic literature review in the PubMed database and complemented the data by inclusion of a case treated in our clinic. In this context, we report on a 60-year-old woman with a right frontal glioblastoma, IDH wildtype, MGMT methylated.

Six months after initial diagnosis and primary treatment, there was extensive local intracranial progression with additional extension into the subcutaneous and frontotemporal cranial bones. Despite continuation of multimodal treatment, further extracerebral manifestations occurred 11 months after the initial diagnosis, both in the cranial bone as well as metastases in the right parotid gland, cervical lymph nodes, and lungs. While local radiotherapy enabled the cerebral lesions to be controlled, the patient’s clinical condition deteriorated rapidly despite simultaneous systemic therapy. The treatment had to be discontinued, and the patient died 5 weeks after confirmation of the multilocal extracerebral manifestations and a total of 12 months after initial diagnosis.

Extracerebral manifestations of glioblastoma require close collaboration and joint decision-making with the patient, with an emphasis on palliative strategies.

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