Lay Summary Glioblastoma is an aggressive brain cancer, but in its early stages it can look similar to a slower-growing tumor called low-grade glioma. The authors of this study wanted to measure how long glioblastoma exists in the brain before it becomes visible on scans and how fast it progresses once detected. To do this, they analyzed imaging, clinical information, and molecular data from 67 patients whose tumors were first seen as small lesions and later developed into glioblastoma. They found that these early tumors became visible on scans about one year before diagnosis, progressed faster in younger patients, and that the average time from first scan detection to death was about three years.
Shigeeda et al. (Wed,) studied this question.