I guess I never posted these..
It's not to give false hope and I sure wish the text wasn't chopped off,
because it makes it very hard for me to concentrate and try to read it and
analyze exactly what they're saying (or not) and I can't read the PDF file
due to computer problems..
so FWIW..
J

http://www.cjns.org/25augtoc/long.html
Long-Term Survivors With a Revised Histological Diagnosis
The prognosis for patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is very poor;
the median survival with the best available treatment is only twelve months
and the survival rate has changed little in the past twenty years.1,2

This study was designed to determine 1) the frequency of LTGBMS in a
population, and 2) to identify which patient, treatment or tumor
characteristics predicted which GBM patient became a LTGBMS. Information
regarding long-term treatment effects and revised histologic diagnoses of
putative LTGBMS was also recorded.

There were seven patients (2.4%) who survived more than three years whose
histologic diagnosis was revised during our review (Table 4). These did not
meet the criteria of GBM and were excluded from our analysis. As expected,
the largest excluded group of tumors were either malignant oligo-

http://virtualtrials.com/fink/ltgbms.pdf
Long-term Glioblastoma Multiforme Survivors: a Population-based Study
Can. J. Neurol. Sci. 1998; 25: 197-201
I can't copy and paste from it..
One important implication of this study is that a re-evaluation of the
original histology be considered when a GBM patient with a long survival is
encountered. Most of our putative GBM patients with long-term survival are
initially misdiagnosed; others report similar findings.9,23 This is not
unexpected as several tumors may superficially resemble a GBM
histologically5,13,15 and, now that malignant oligodendrogliomas have been
recognized as being highly chemo-sensitive,24 gliomas with necrosis are
more carefully examined and not necessarily called GBM. The most common
revised diagnosis in our patients and others5 was malignant
oligodendroglioma (pure or mixed); others have found more indolently
growing tumors such as pleomorphic xanthoastrocytoma13 in long term
survivors.

I just added these so a person can see what they say for prognostics and
other aspects of this diagnosis.

http://brain.mgh.harvard.edu/PatientGuide.htm
Glioblastoma multiforme and anaplastic gliomas:  A patient guide

http://www.emedicine.com/neuro/topic147.htm
Glioblastoma multiforme
Synonyms and related keywords: GBM, grade IV astrocytoma, grade IV glioma,
high-grade astrocytoma, high-grade glioma