Giant Supratentorial Brain Tumors in Children: Functional Outcome and Progression-Free Survival Analysis

Abstract

Introduction: This study aimed to identify factors affecting progression-free survival (PFS) in pediatric patients with giant supratentorial brain tumors (GSBTs) treated with surgical excision. The secondary aim was to analyze how these same factors affected the functional outcome in the long term. Methods: We performed a retrospective, analytical, single-center cohort study. We included all pediatric patients with GSBT between January 2014 and June 2018. Patients were followed for a minimum of 24 months for the PFS and overall survival (OS) analysis. Functional status score (FSS) was used to assess the functional outcome. Results: We included 27 patients with GSBT, the median age was six (range 2–12), and eleven patients had a grade IV tumor. The 24-month PFS and OS were 51.85% and 74.04%, respectively. A PFS-ending event or treatment failure occurred in 13 patients. We found that patients with postoperative FFS >16 have a worse PFS than patients with a postoperative FSS <15 (HR 4.51; p = 0.03). Patients with more than three surgeries had worse PFS than patients with one or two procedures (HR 11.39; p = 0.004). High-grade tumors were associated with worse PFS than low-grade tumors (HR 1.55; p = 0.04). Finally, patients with CNS infections had worse PFS than patients without that complication (HR 2.70; p = 0.04). Conclusions: GSBTs in pediatric patients are complex lesions that require multidisciplinary management. Surgical management and quality of life should be considered when choosing the best treatment. Factors influencing long-term PFS were high-grade histopathology, the need for three or more surgeries, postoperative FSS >16, and CNS infections.