Coordinating care for patients with central nervous system metastases presents practical challenges across medical institutions, highlighting the critical need for integrated multidisciplinary team discussions. Specialists gathered at a conference in Boston to discuss how collaborative treatment planning changes care proposals and improves outcomes.
Coordinating care for patients with central nervous system metastases requires input from multiple specialties, including neurosurgery, neuroradiology, radiation oncology, and medical oncology. Yet, integrating that input consistently into treatment decisions remains a practical challenge across medical institutions according to reporting from CancerNetwork.
Multidisciplinary Team Discussions in Brain Metastases Care
At the 2026 SNO ASCO CNS Metastases Conference in Boston, MA, Lizza Hendriks discussed why she believes every patient with central nervous system metastases deserves a dedicated multidisciplinary team discussion. Hendriks described data suggesting that treatment proposals change in a significant percentage of patients once discussed in an MDT setting. She also pointed to signals, though based on biased data, that survival may improve for these patients, characterizing the approach as a comparatively simple and low-cost way to improve care.
Hendriks serves as a professor of thoracic oncology at Maastricht University Medical Center+ in the Netherlands, where she leads the clinical lung cancer research department. She also chairs the Innovative Cancer Diagnostics Therapy group at the GROW School for Oncology and Developmental Biology at Maastricht University, with research focused specifically on brain metastases in patients with lung cancer.
Bridging Gaps Between Radiation and Medical Oncology
When asked about where persistent gaps exist between specialties in this collaborative model, Hendriks pointed to bidirectional knowledge divides. Radiation oncologists are not always familiar with the intracranial efficacy of systemic therapies, while clinicians prescribing systemic therapy do not always understand the effects of specific radiotherapy techniques or when it is safe to omit radiotherapy altogether.
She also noted that neurosurgery is frequently underutilized as a resource, a pattern she has observed specifically in the Netherlands. To address these gaps outside of live MDT discussions, Hendriks described a regional initiative in her own practice to document formal care pathways covering the effects of systemic therapy, contraindications for radiotherapy, and indications for surgery.
“What is the importance of integrated multidisciplinary care when treating someone with brain metastases?”
Lizza Hendriks, MD, PhD, via CancerNetwork
Evidence-Based Care Pathways for Emergency Decisions
Having written care pathways in place provides a reliable fallback when clinicians cannot attend an MDT meeting or when they face an emergency treatment decision as detailed by CancerNetwork. These pathways offer evidence-based guidance covering systemic therapy effects, radiotherapy contraindications, and surgical indications, helping bridge communication divides among specialists before critical treatment choices are finalized.
