Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Raj Mukherjee recaps an analysis of the impact of social determinants of health on treatment outcomes for patients having glioblastoma surgery. A review of 500 patients showed several socially based indexes were independent risk factors for poor outcomes. Being aware of social determinants of health can help clinicians connect patients and their families with resources to access treatment and improve survival and quality of life.
Hello, my name is Roj mccurry and I'm one of the neurosurgeons at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and also at Johns Hopkins Baby Medical Center where I focus on the treatment of patients with brain tumors. Uh I'd like to tell you about a recent analysis and paper that my team performed looking at the outcomes of approximately 500 patients with glioblastoma. Uh glioblastoma or GB M is amongst the most common primary malignant brain tumors, which historically has unfortunately very poor survival. There are a lot of factors that go into um survival for those patients and trying to optimize outcomes. And some of those factors include having an optimal surgery, postoperative, uh radiation and chemotherapy uh as well as you know, the social support system uh that patients have around them. Um This has historically been measured through social determinants of health and uh this hasn't historically been looked at in patients with glib blastoma. So recently, my team identified uh 500 patients with GB M that were treated at our institution over the past decade. Um We identified those patients that had good outcomes and poor outcomes and poor outcomes were defined as having an extended hospital length of stay and inability to start postoperative, adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation and survival of less than 90 days. So, there were a number of factors that were associated with some of those poor outcomes. But interestingly, we found several indices associated with social determinants of health to be associated with those poor outcomes. Amongst our major findings, we found that approximately 20% of patients had an extended hospital length of stay and approximately 20% of patients failed to start adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation. And approximately 20% of patients failed to survive 90 days after surgery. In looking at some of the factors associated with these poor outcomes. We found that social determinants of health were a significant and independent risk factor for these outcomes. While social determinants of health cannot fully be modified. Uh being aware of patients who are at risk of having poor social determinants of health can allow us as providers to connect more thoroughly with their primary care providers and to connect patients and families to resources including clinical care coordinators and social workers that can help patients connect to the adjuvant treatments and providers that they need to hopefully improve their survival and have the best quality of life that they can.
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