ASO Author Reflections: The Disease-Free Interval is Associated with Oncologic Outcomes for Patients with Recurrent Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor

Excerpt

For patients with resected gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), several prognostic tools are available to predict recurrence and form the basis for recommending adjuvant imatinib therapy.1,2 Patients with high-risk tumors most frequently experience recurrence after completing adjuvant tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) therapy (≤ 90 %) rather than during treatment. Additionally, patients with recurrent GIST can display a wide range of outcomes, including survival and time to imatinib resistance, even amongst patients with identical driver mutations and seemingly similar patterns of recurrence. To date, supportive data enabling clinicians to predict prognosis accurately after GIST recurrence are sparse.3 Ultimately, the inability of clinicians to prognosticate hinders their ability to counsel patients regarding the role of continued TKI treatment versus resection of recurrent disease. Additionally, factors leading to the development of secondary TKI resistance are poorly understood, although this is a key event for patients with recurrent disease and those with metastatic disease at diagnosis. …