KPS/LDH index: a simple tool for identifying patients with metastatic melanoma who are unlikely to benefit from palliative whole brain radiotherapy.

Purpose: Low Karnofsky performance status (KPS) and elevated lactate dehydrogenases (LDHs) as a surrogate marker for tumor load and cell turnover may depict patients with a very short life expectancy. To validate this finding and compare it to other indices, namely, the recursive partitioning analysis (RPA) and diagnosis-specific graded prognostic assessment (DS-GPA), a multicenter analysis was undertaken.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of 234 metastatic melanoma patients uniformly treated with palliative whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT) was done.