Abstract
Incidence of anaplastic astrocytoma and glioblastoma multiforme increases with age and culminates between 70 and 90 years of age. Demographic, clinical and medical attributes of patients under 65 years are investigated in detail and often reported.
But in elderly there are only small studies of this disease. The treatment of the elderly is difficult (age, comorbidities, economy and prognosis).
A "Standard treatment" of the elderly is a surgery and a radiotherapy (with or without a chemotherapy). It is obvious that multimodal treatment can assure better life expectancy, better quality of life and it can prevent expansive tumor growth.
In reality this is less probable in patients older than 75 years of age. The authors report 208 patients aged 65 and older that show that a multimodal treatment gets these patient's survival closer to what we see in younger population.
This complex therapy might help improve the treatment of high grade gliomas in rapidly growing elderly population.