Background Few studies were reported on the comparison of clinical outcomes between intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) and three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT) in the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).This study aimed to determine whether IMRT improves clinical outcomes compared with 3D-CRT in patients with GBM.Methods The records of 54 patients with newly-diagnosed GBM from July 2009 to December 2010 were reviewed.The patients underwent postoperative IMRT or 3D-CRT with concurrent and adjuvant temozolomide.Kaplan-Meier method and log rank test were used to estimate differences of patients' survival.Results The median follow-up was 13 months.Of the 54 patients,fifty (92.6％) completed the combined modality treatment.The 1-year overall survival rate (OS) was 79.6％.The pattern of failure was predominantly local.A comparative analysis revealed that no statistical difference was observed between the IMRT group (n=21) and the 3D-CRT group (n=33) for 1-year OS (89.6％ vs.75.8％,P=0.795),or 1-year progression-free survival (PFS) (61.0％ vs.45.5％,P=0.867).In dosimetric comparison,IMRT seemed to allow better sparing of organs at risk than 3D-CRT did (P=0.050,P=0.055).However,there was no significant difference for toxicities of irradiation between the IMRT group and the 3D-CRT group.Conclusions Our preliminary results suggested that delivering standard radiation doses by IMRT is unlikely to improve local control or overall survival for GBM compared with 3D-CRT.Given this lack of survival benefit and increased costs of IMRT,the utilization of IMRT treatment for GBM needs to be carefully rationalized.