An Internet-Based Registry For The Documentation Of Neoplastic Meningitis

Neoplastic involvement of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and meninges is a relatively rare and highly heterogeneous disease. Only few randomized studies investigated different treatment strategies and achived no conclusive results. New prospective studies with homogeneous entities are difficult to establish and some initiatives failed recently. Therefore, an open, multicentric registry may be an adequate alternative for a prospective documentation and analysis of a large number of cases of neoplastic meningitis from different primary neoplasms.

To enable an easy multicentric access, an internet-based database was chosen. Secutrial is a professional database which enables pseudonymized registration of clinical courses and meets all requirements for the protection of personal data. Predefined routines enable an immediate analysis of data like survival or toxicity including the most recently documented data. The internet-based access enables a multicentric, international documentation of cases of neoplastic meningitis. Analysis of these data may allow for conclusions on efficacy and toxicity of different treatment strategies in the separate tumor entities.

The configuration of the database provides a separate documentation of the course of primary neoplasm, systemic and central nervous system metastases as well as neoplastic meningitis. Operative, medical treatment and radiotherapy can be assessed as well as results of radiological, histological and cytological examinations including diagnostic and prognostic markers. Also, complications of the disease and toxicity of treatment can be documented. By such, the database is able to discriminate between different causes of clinical deterioration and death. The system is flexible enough to enable the addition of newly established items like biomarkers if needed. Dicomm data of radiological examinations can be uploaded and shared if needed and biobanking organized. The results of tumor boards can be documented as well.

Since multicentric prospective trials are difficult to perform for this rare and heterogeneous disease, an internet based registry appears to be an adequate alternative to collect data on treatment results. We think that the structure and content of the database presented here provides an adequate tool to collect and analyse a large number of cases with neoplastic meningitis.