WHOle Brain Irradiation or STEreotactic Radiosurgery for Five or More Brain Metastases (WHOBI-STER)

This work aims to evaluate neurocognitive performance, daily activity and quality of life and local control among patients with brain metastasis (MBM) ≥ 5 due to solid tumors treated with Stereotactic RadioSurgery (SRS) or Whole Brain RadioTherapy (WBRT). This multicentric randomised controlled trial will be conducted at the Fondazione IOM (Viagrande) in collaboration with REM (Viagrande), Hospital G. Martino (Messina) and Hospital Civico ARNAS (Palermo). It will involve, within 5 years starting from 15 September 2020, the enrollment of 100 patients (50 for each arm) with MBM ≥ 5, age ≥ 18 years, Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS) ≥ 70, life expectancy \> 3 months, histological confirmation of primary tumor, with controlled or controllable extracranial disease, baseline Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) of 20/30, Barthel Activities of Daily Living score 90/100, to be subjected to SRS on each brain lesion by LINAC with monoisocentric technique and non-coplanar arcs (experimental arm) or to WBRT (control arm). The primary endpoints are neurocognitive performance, quality of life and autonomy in daily-life activities variations, the first one assessed by Moca Score and Hopkins Verbal Learning Test - Revised, the second one through the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 15 Palliative Care (EORTC QLQ-C15-PAL) and Brain Neoplasm (BN-20) questionnaires, the third one through the Barthel Index, respectively. The secondary endpoints are time to intracranial failure, overall survival, retreatments frequency, acute and late toxicities, KPS decrease. It will be considered significant a statistical difference of at least 29% between the two arms (statistical power of 80% with a significance level of 95%). This trial has been approved by the local ethics committee on July 7th 2020 (record 70). Several studies debate what is the predominant factor accountable for the development of neurocognitive decay among patients un