Participants and Procedures
This follow-up cross-sectional study consisted of 187 patients treated with PRT for a primary brain tumor. Patients received assessment during PRT (baseline) as part of their routine clinical care at a scheduled outpatient visit. Eligibility criteria for this analysis included diagnosis of any type of brain tumor, patients were ≤ 20 years at initiation of PRT, patients had no prior diagnosis of brain or CNS tumor, no recurrence, and follow-up assessment was conducted at least one year post-PRT. Follow-up assessment consisted of standardized written measures assessing psychosocial and executive functioning with age-based normative data (Table 1).
Patients were treated with PRT, surgery, and chemotherapy appropriate for the diagnosis and according to the current standard of care. Surgical resection, when performed, was prior to PRT. Chemotherapy was completed before follow-up testing. Radiation was delivered with standard fraction sizes of 1.8 Gy (RBE) per fraction (1.5 Gy per fraction for germinomas) in accordance with the national standard set by Children’s Oncology Group protocols for target coverage. Institutional Review Board approvals were obtained for this study.