University professor helps to develop brain tumour guidelines

Geoff Pilkington, professor of cellular and molecular neuro-oncology, was one of three UK academics who devised the European Association for Neuro-Oncology (EANO) guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of patients with astrocytic and oligodendroglial gliomas, including glioblastomas.

The guidelines will provide guidance for diagnostic and management decisions, while limiting unnecessary treatments and costs.

Recommendations discuss prevention, early diagnosis and screening, histological and molecular diagnostics, therapy and follow-up.

Professor Pilkington, head of the Brain Tumour Research Centre at the university, said: ‘The implementation of this guideline requires multidisciplinary structures of care and defined processes of diagnosis and treatment.

‘It focuses on pathological and radiological diagnostics and the main treatment methods of surgery, radiotherapy and pharmacotherapy.

‘The new guidelines are timely, coming in the wake of the revised World Health Organisation classification of tumours of the central nervous system which adds molecular profiling to classical histopathological pattern recognition in order to potentially stratify individual sub-groups of patients to receive more personalised therapies.

‘This, we hope, will lead to improved survival times and improved quality of life, post treatment.’