The latest news: "National Cancer Comprehensive Network" adds "alternating electric field therapy" (Novocure) to it's treatment guidelines for treatment of recurrent glioblastoma The NCCN guidelines are important because many insurance plans base their payment decisions upon these guidelines! The new version lists "alternating electric field therapy" (Novocure TTF100-A is the only FDA approved alternating electric field therapy device) as an option for both local or multiple/diffuse recurrences of GBMs. Toxicity and survival in primary glioblastoma patients treated with concomitant plus adjuvant temozolomide versus adjuvant temozolomide: results of a single-institution, retrospective, matched-pair analysis. This abstract shows a much smaller overall survival benefit to adding Temodar at the same time as radiation than the "Stupp" report... only a 1.25 month advantage to adding Temodar to radiation. It also points out that there are more side effects when adding Temodar to radiation. They conclude that we should question if the standard therapy is worth it. My thoughts: this is a smaller study and not randomized as the Stupp studt was..so I tend to put more importance on the Stupp study - I wouldn't get rid of the standard therapy yet based on this study but it does show the need for more research.
