How Brain Cancer Kills, Should T Kennedy Have Left Office?

Brain cancer has a wide variety of symptoms including seizures, sleepiness, confusion, and behavioral changes. Not all brain tumors are cancerous, and benign tumors can result in similar symptoms.

Primary brain tumors can either be benign or malignant. Benign brain tumors (eg. meningiomas, acoustic neuromas, pituitary gland tumors) usually grow slowly and can often be removed by surgery depending upon their specific location in the brain. Malignant brain tumors, such as glioblastomas and anaplastic astrocytomas, among others, tend to grow rapidly spreading into the surrounding brain tissue and often cannot be entirely removed surgically.

Approximately 17,000 new cases of primary brain tumors are treated each year in the United States.

The most common age groups are children 3 to 12 and adults ages 40-70. Metastatic brain tumors, such as glioblastomas, are much more common in adults than in children.

Glioblastoma can be difficult to treat although surgery, radiation therapy, steroids, and chemotherapy have shown the ability to prolong survival.

In some cases, mostly in benign tumours, symptoms can be completely cured by surgical removal of the tumour. Your neurosurgeon will attempt to remove the tumour when possible.

Stereotactic surgery is a newer “knifeless” technique that destroys a brain tumour without opening the skull. A CT or MRI scan is used to pinpoint the exact location of the tumour in the brain. High-energy radiation beams are trained on the tumour from different angles. The radiation destroys the tumour. This technique is sometimes called “gamma knife”.

Radiation therapy is sometimes used for people who cannot undergo surgery. In other cases, it is used after surgery to destroy any tumour cells that may remain.