Palliative whole-brain radiotherapy and health-related quality of life for patients with brain metastasis in cancer

Ying Gao,1,* Fei Gao,2,* Jin-lu Ma,1 Dong-li Zhao1 1Department of Radiotherapy Oncology, First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, 2Department of Neurology, First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Medical University, Xi’an, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Objective: To assess the use of palliative whole-brain radiotherapy (WBRT) in the treatment of brain metastases (BMs) and to evaluate the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of these patients.Materials and methods: We conducted a retrospective study of 46 patients with BMs who were treated with WBRT at the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University between January 2013 and January 2015. External beam radiotherapy techniques were used to deliver 40 Gy in 20 fractions or 30 Gy in ten fractions with a 10 MV photon beam from a linear accelerator to the whole brain. Data were stored and analyzed using SPSS version 17.0.Results: Of the 46 patients, the survival time of patients in our study was 10.8±0.55 months: 11.8±0.46 months in patients with WBRT, 11.75±1.00 in patients with WBRT + chemotherapy, and 3±0.79 months in patients with supportive care, respectively (P