Lay Summary Some brain tumors called gliomas can appear as more than one spot in the brain. The authors of this study wanted to compare how often this happens and how it relates to outcomes in tumors with and without an IDH mutation, a common genetic mutation seen in gliomas. To do this, they reviewed brain scans and medical records from 1,370 patients and measured how often multiple tumor spots occurred, how long it took for new spots to appear, overall survival, and how similar tumor tissue looked under the microscope. They found that tumors without an IDH mutation developed multiple spots more often and were linked to shorter overall survival, while tumors with an IDH mutation more often showed differences between tumor spots when tissue samples were compared.
Yang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.