What she stated proved what I debated on this iHub, they don’t rule early signs of pseudoprogression as a progression event. They wait to see whether the next scan is stable, better or worse before determining if the patient had a true progression event. :)
Pseudoprogression
Shortly after completion of RT, patients with high-grade brain tumors can present with an increase in contrast-enhancing lesion size, followed by subsequent improvement or stabilization without any further treatment (Fig 1).8,9 This occurrence, which mimics tumor progression, is termed “pseudoprogression.” Pseudoprogression is a subacute treatment-related reaction with or without clinical deterioration. However, in most patients, the increase in radiologic abnormalities is clinically asymptomatic. Pseudoprogression is most likely induced by a pronounced local tissue reaction with an inflammatory component, edema, and abnormal vessel permeability causing new or increased contrast enhancement on MR imaging examinations. Most important, some studies have found an association between the incidence of pseudoprogression and increased survival; perhaps pseudoprogression represents an active “inflammatory” response against the tumor.9
Currently, the only method of distinguishing pseudoprogression and early progression of disease is to perform follow-up examinations of the patients because conventional MR imaging is unable to differentiate the 2 and alternative techniques have not yet been validated in prospective trials.9,11 Analysis with follow-up conventional MR imaging examinations allows such a distinction because the changes related to pseudoprogression decrease in size. The development and validation of new methods to evaluate true brain tumor response—as opposed to inflammatory change—would be very helpful in the assessment of treatment efficacy.
