Does the increased rate of surgical resection of gliomas mean an improved prognosis for patients?

  The 2009 Chinese Consensus on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Malignant Glioma [1] and the American Guidelines for the Treatment of Central Nervous System Tumors both strongly recommend that the first step in the treatment of glioma is surgery to achieve “Maximal Safe Resection” on imaging. Resection”. There is ample clinical evidence (Class Ia) that “maximal resection” helps to delay recurrence, prolong survival, and improve survival in both low-grade and high-grade gliomas [3, 4], and “maximal safe In contrast, “maximum safety” can help to reduce the disability rate and improve the quality of life. With the development of society, brain tumor patients have increasingly higher requirements for quality of life. Based on this, the current international trend is changing from “Maximal Resection” to “Maximal Safe”, which is based on the premise of intraoperative brain structure and function. The premise is the precise localization of brain structure and function during surgery. Due to individual differences, functional remodeling and displacement, traditional anatomical landmarks are not reliable. The combination of new preoperative and intraoperative techniques (including: navigation, iMRI, intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring, and arousal anesthesia) for precise functional brain localization is a great advancement in neurosurgery. Functional localization of motor cortical and subcortical motor pathways is now practical for clinical use, but techniques for functional localization of cerebral language (especially Chinese) are still immature.  Comparing the statistics of CBTRUS 2008 (cases enrolled from 2000-2004) [14] and 2011 (cases enrolled from 2004-2007) [15], we were surprised to find that the clinical outcomes of gliomas are gradually improving: the 5- and 10-year survival rates of GBM improved from 3.4% and 2.4% to 4.75% and 2.8%; the 5- and 10-year survival rates of astro The 5- and 10-year survival rates for astrocytomas increased from 37.5% and 31.4% to 48.16% and 39.10%, and the 5- and 10-year survival rates for oligodendrogliomas increased from 71.9% and 56.1% to 79.48% and 63.58%. Although multiple factors influence the survival of glioma patients, it is likely that the increased degree of tumor resection is one of the main reasons.  The future development of glioma treatment will shift toward individualized therapy, which includes a combination of individualized surgery, individualized radiotherapy, and individualized medicine. It is expected that iMRI real-time imaging technology, computerized 3D visualization technology, electrophysiological technology for advanced brain function localization, high-throughput microarray gene chip and microfluidic chip technology, molecular imaging technology, nanotechnology, patient-specific tumor marker determination and targeted agents are expected to be effective weapons to overcome the clinical treatment problems of glioma.