ArticleEuropean journal of medical research2022
Influence of COVID-19 pandemic on the decision making of patients in undergoing gamma knife radiosurgery.
Article in European journal of medical research, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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2 citing papers in PubMed, 3 citations in OpenAlex.
- Outcomes of gamma knife treated large symptomatic arteriovenous malformations according to guidelines of Taiwan neurosurgical consensus.Radiation oncology (London, England) · 2025Article
- Increased time to surgery and worse perioperative outcome in benign brain tumor patients with COVID-19.Journal of clinical neuroscience : official journal of the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeGamma knife radiosurgery (GK) is a commonly used approach for the treatment of intracranial lesions. Its radiation response is typically not immediate, but delayed. In this study, we analyzed cases from a prospectively collected database to assess the influence of COVID-19 pandemic on the decision making in patients treated by gamma knife radiosurgery.
methodsFrom January 2019 to August 2021, 540 cases of intracranial lesions were treated by GK with 207 cases before COVID-19 pandemic as a control. During the COVID-19 pandemic, 333 cases were similarly treated on patients with or without the COVID-19 vaccination. All the GK treated parameters as well as time profile in the decision making were analyzed. The parameters included age, sex, characteristic of lesion, targeted volume, peripheral radiation dose, neurological status, Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS), time interval from MRI diagnosis to consultation, time interval from the approval to treatment, frequency of outpatient department (OPD) visit, and frequency of imaging follow-up.
resultsLonger time intervals from diagnosis to GK consultation and treatment were found in the pandemic group (36.8 ± 25.5/54.5 ± 27.6 days) compared with the pre-COVID control (17.1 ± 22.4/45.0 ± 28.0 days) or vaccination group (12.2 ± 7.1/29.6 ± 10.9 days) (p < 0.001, and p < 0.001, respectively). The fewer OPD visits and MRI examinations also showed the same trends. High proportion of neurological deficits were found in the pandemic group (65.4%) compared with the control (45.4%) or vaccination group (58.1%) (p < 0.001). The Charlson comorbidity in the pandemic group was 3.9 ± 3.3, the control group was 4.6 ± 3.2, and the vaccination group was 3.1 ± 3.1. There were similar inter-group difference (p < 0.001). In multiple variant analyses, longer time intervals from the diagnosis to consultation or treatment, OPD frequency and MRI examination were likely influenced by the status of the COVID-19 pandemic as they were alleviated by the vaccination.
conclusionsThe decision making in patients requiring gamma knife treatment was most likely influenced by the status of the COVID-19 pandemic, while vaccination appeared to attenuate their hesitant behaviors. Patients with pre-treatment neurological deficits and high co-morbidity undergoing the gamma knife treatment were less affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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