| Literature DB >> 21785914 |
Dionysis Papadatos-Pastos1, Udai Banerji.
Abstract
Brain metastases (BM) are treated with surgical resection when feasible. Unfortunately this occurs only in a small subset of patients. The optimal treatment for patients with intracranial metastases non amenable to surgical resection has not been identified. Radiotherapy improves symptom control and survival but long-term local control has been poor. Conventional chemotherapies have generally produced disappointing results possibly due to their limited ability to penetrate the blood brain barrier. Therefore, newer treatments are required for patients with unresectable BM. Targeted therapies such as bevacizumab, erlotinib, gefitinib, sunitinib and sorafenib, are all licensed and have demonstrated improved survival in patients with metastatic disease. In this review we will present current data on targeted therapies that have been approved for the treatment of malignant tumours and we discuss the evidence of their use in patients with BM.Entities:
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Year: 2011 PMID: 21785914 DOI: 10.1007/s11060-011-0661-y
Source DB: PubMed Journal: J Neurooncol ISSN: 0167-594X Impact factor: 4.130