Treatment for patients with cerebral metastases.

To establish the effectiveness of treatment of patients with intracranial metastatic neoplasms, a retrospective study of survival of patients who had surgical excision, irradiation, or chemotherapy was compared with survival of patients who received no treatment. Our results indicate that although any form of therapy was superior to no treatment, no modality was clearly better than another. Furthermore, the prognosis for survival of patients with solitary lesions from a known primary was only slightly better than that of patients with numerous metastases. The prognosis was slightly improved when the cerebral lesion was detected before finding the primary site of origin. These observations should be considered when planning treatment for patients with brain metastases.