Gender may be a prognostic factor in survival and clinical outcomes for patients undergoing treatment for spine metastases, a new retrospective review by Duke researchers finds.
The Study
This was an international multi-center study that investigated patient demographic data, overall survival, treatment details, perioperative complications, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) measures. Researchers arranged patients by sex and then conducted a separate sensitivity analysis to exclude gender-specific cancers like breast and prostate cancer.
Findings
“Both males and females experienced significantly improved HRQoL scores after treatment, but females demonstrated longer survival and had a lower complication rate,” the authors wrote, adding that gender should be taken into consideration accordingly when counseling patients.
The study cohorts included 207 female and 108 male patients. Age, smoking status, and site of primary cancer were significantly different between the two.
The HRQoL scores from quality of life measures, such as EQ-5D, pain NRS, the short form 36 version 2 (SF-36v2), and the Spine Oncology Study Group Outcomes Questionnaire (SOSGOQ) were significantly improved in both males and females. However, under the sensitivity analysis, the improvements in SOSGOQ physical, mental, and social subdomains and SF-36 disappeared for females.
Source
Rory Goodwin, MD, PhD, is the first author on the paper that includes collaborators from around the world. Goodwin is the surgical director of the Duke Center for Brain and Spine Metastasis. The paper was published in Spine. Read the full paper here.