ASCO/ASTRO/SNO Guideline on Treatment of Brain Metastases 

Guideline published: December 2021

Read Full-Text Guideline

This multisociety guideline addresses the role of surgery, radiation therapy, and systemic therapy in the treatment of patients with brain metastases. For each of these therapies, a set of clinical questions was considered (summarized below). ASTRO is also publishing a complementary guideline focused only on radiation therapy for brain metastases, which expands on these radiation questions.

• Surgery: Benefits and harms of surgery and of laser interstitial thermal therapy.

• Systemic therapy: Which systemic therapy options, alone or in combination, have demonstrated clinical benefits.

• Radiation therapy: Benefits and harms of whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT); Approaches to mitigate the harms of WBRT; Benefits and harms of: stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS); SRS compared to WBRT; and use of radiation sensitizers?

Developed in collaboration with and endorsed by:

• American Society of Clinical Oncology
• American Society for Radiation Oncology
• ​Society for Neuro-Oncology

Resources:

• Evidence tables
• Slide set
• Summary recommendation table