Defining treatment for brain metastases patients: nihilism versus optimism.

Aims: Treatment of brain metastases patients has included whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT) for over 50 years, and there is much data showing this to be associated with short-term gains. The integration of resection and radiosurgery to these patients allows some better prognostic groups to experience long-term local control and improvement in quality of life. The recursive partitioning analysis of the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) has been used as a predictive model for over a decade to identify three classes of patients.