Bibliometric review on hyperprotected radiotherapy for the treatment of brain tumors

Introduction: In recent years, there has been considerable interest in the application of advanced imaging techniques to improve the treatment of brain tumor. Objective: to analyze studies that deal with hyperfractionation in relation to the survival of patients submitted to radiotherapy of brain tumors. Materials and methods: By choosing the keywords Hyperfrationation and brain for searching the database of Scopus, 102 documents were found. Due to the inclusion of the topic, the publications related to protonotherapy and anatomical areas different from those of interest were excluded after the cross (TITLE-ABS-KEY (hyperfractionation AND BRAIN)) AND (glioma) AND AND (glioblastoma) AND (EXACTKEYWORD, "Brain Neoplasms"), 26 papers were selected. The authors and articles with the highest citations and publications were searched for the most expressive information according to the research theme. Results: The incidence of high grade glioma (HGG) is approximately 5 per 100,000 person-years in Europe and North America. According to Hingorini et al. 2012, the prognosis of patients with glioblastoma (GBM) remains poor, and the use of hyperfractionation or dose escalation beyond 60 Gy did not confer any survival benefit. Hypofractionated radiation therapy has been employed as a novel approach to achieve dose escalation with interesting results. For Lutterbach J. et al 2003, in addition to established prognostic factors, anemia and elevated serum LDH levels may negatively influence the outcome in a multivariate analysis in patients with glioblastoma. Conclusion: hyperfractionation has not been able to obtain significant answers regarding the survival of patients submitted to radiotherapy of brain tumors.