A team of researchers in Hospital 57357 successfully developed the treatment protocol of some serious brain stem tumors that would shorten the radiotherapy sessions to less than a half while returning the same results and same improvement. The new protocol saves time and effort for the patient and family as it shortens treatment time. It also eliminates waiting lists and enables treating more patients.
The research was published this week in the International Journal for Radiation Oncology, Biology, physics, IJROBP, associated to the American Organization for Radiotherapy, which is considered one of the most important international scientific journals in the field of radiotherapy.
Pontine glioma
Dr. Mohamed Saad Zaghloul, head of Hospital 57357’s radiotherapy department and head of the research team, reveales, “The research is about a type of brain stem tumors called Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma, or DIPG, which spreads fast and starts in the brain stem. The tumor overlaps with all the sensation centers such as vision, hearing, talking, swallowing, motion, balance and respiration, which makes it hard to remove surgically, accordingly to treat it. So far there is no treatment for this tumor but radiotherapy where the patient receives 30 radiotherapy sessions that contribute to enhancing the symptoms during the patient’s survival and it is not a cure.”
“Because of Hospital 57357’s expertise in dealing with such complicated cases, it receives annually 70 DIPG cases which represent more than third the total number of cases in Egypt”, added Dr. Zaghloul.
Reducing the number of sessions
Pursuing to alleviate the burden on patients with this type of tumor, we engaged in a research study that was published in 2014 where we compared between treating patients with 30 radiotherapy sessions and treating them with 13 intensive sessions and the study involved 80 patients. Results of the study demonstrate that in the 2 groups, final outcome was the same though the symptoms improved faster for patients in the group receiving 13 sessions. Moreover, the improvement rate in case of patients less than 5 years is faster when treated with 13 sessions.
About the importance of this result, Dr. Zaghloul says; “according to this research the treatment protocol for this serious type of brain stem tumors will change to become 13 intensive sessions instead of 30 sessions, which will make it easier for the patient and family, will shorten the treatment duration in the Hospital, accordingly enable treating more patients.
Immunotherapy
About the possibility of finding other treatments that would enhance the treatment results of those patients and increase their survival period, he said: “this disease results from a defect in one of the genes, and there are many researches in the field of immunotherapy to fix this gene.
He revealed that the biggest problem with this disease is that it is discovered late, as it is not detected until late stage symptoms, appear. The symptoms are, unbalance with vomiting, eye squint, weakness of one or more of the body functions, and it is diagnosed using the MRI.
The research team included a group of Hospital 57357’s physicians from the radiotherapy, diagnostic imaging, pediatric oncology and neurosurgery departments, Dr. Azza Nasr, Dr. Marwan Tolba, Dr. Amal Refat, Dr. Aida Yousef, Dr. Amal Mosaab, Dr. Abdel Rahman Enayet, Dr. Omar Arafa, Dr. Islam Maher and Dr. Eman Aldibawi.