Congress of neurological surgeons systematic review and evidence-based clinical practice parameter guidelines for the treatment of adults with newly diagnosed glioblastoma: Introduction and Methods

Purpose This is an update of the evidence-based guideline for management of newly diagnosed glioblastomas sponsored by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) initially published in 2008. The objective is to update evidence-based management of newly diagnosed glioblastomas over all commonly used diagnostic and treatment modalities in regularly encountered clinical situations. Methods A multidisciplinary writing group was assembled to create documents related to imaging, cytoreductive surgery, neuropathology, radiation therapy, chemotherapy and emerging developments. Questions from the prior set of guidelines, and new and modified questions were used to guide a search of the scientific literature since the last guideline search was completed in June 2005. Citations were screened, classified and used as evidence to create recommendations addressing the questions in a manner that was directly linked to this evidence. Results The sixteen writers produced 34 questions resulting in eight Level I recommendations, eleven Level II recommendations, and 27 Level II recommendations across all the topics. In some instances, insufficient data was available to answer all or part of a question and this is stated and explained. Conclusions This series of guidelines is based upon relevant evidence in the literature related to the management of newly diagnosed glioblastomas. They set a benchmark for the management of this disease while highlighting key areas of weakness in our knowledge and suggest directions for future basic and clinical research to improve evidence quality and recommendation strength.