Survival, Costs, and Health Care Resource Use by Line of Therapy in US Medicare Patients With Newly Diagnosed Glioblastoma: A Retrospective Observational Study

Al's Comment:

 This is pretty shocking. They looked only at Medicare patients, aged 66 or older with glioblastoma..  and this study covered the years 2007 - 2013 so it doesn't reflect the benefit (and costs) of recent treatments like Optune (as Medicare only approved payments for Optune last year) and GammaTile.

They found that the average survival for GBM was ony 5.9 months for those who had surgery and only 3 months for those that did not have surgery.  The numbers we usually see include young people who do much better.

This underscores the need for us to change the entire system. We have the opportunity to make a major change now but I need your help contacting your legislators (not even asking for donations!) . See virtualtrials.com/activism.cfm     This will make a huge difference and give us 5-10 new treatment options within months after the bill passes. I could see it easily doubling average survival - just by you taking 5 minutes of your time.

Survival, Costs, and Health Care Resource Use by Line of Therapy in US Medicare Patients With Newly Diagnosed Glioblastoma: A Retrospective Observational Study