Treatments Of Brain Tumors

What are the treatments for brain tumors?

There are a number of different treatments for brain tumors. Some brain tumors are treated with a combination of different types of therapies. The exact location and type of brain tumor will dictate which treatments are recommended.

Surgery

Whenever possible, surgical resection is recommended for the majority of brain tumors. It is rare that a primary brain tumor can be cured without a surgical resection. However, the location of the brain tumor will dictate whether or not surgery is an option, and to what extent surgery can be performed safely. Some tumors are seated in places in the brain that are just too dangerous to operate on, and surgery cannot be employed. The risks to the patient from surgery depend on the location and size of the tumor. Talk to your neurosurgeon about the specific risks of your planned surgery.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is the use of anti-cancer drugs that go throughout the entire body. These drugs may be given through a vein or as pills by mouth. One of the special challenges in treating brain tumors with chemotherapy is that there is a natural barrier between the brain and the blood, which blocks many medications from entering the brain. Only certain chemotherapy drugs can cross this blood-brain barrier to treat disease in the nervous system. For certain high grade tumors, particularly glioblastoma multiforme, the most commonly used chemotherapy is known as temozolamide, an alkylating chemotherapy. It has been shown to be effective when used in combination with radiation therapy after surgery. Additional temozolamide is given after completing radiation therapy, usually for an additional 6 months.

There are many different chemotherapy drugs used for brain tumors, and your medical oncologist can explain why he or she recommends one particular regimen over another in your case.

Radiation

Radiation therapy uses high energy rays (similar to x-rays) to kill cancer cells. Radiation for brain tumors comes from an external source (called external beam radiation therapy), and it requires patients to come 5 days a week for approximately 6 weeks to a radiation therapy treatment center. The treatment takes just a few minutes, and it is painless. External beam radiation therapy is often employed for brain tumors, either as a primary treatment for unresectable tumors or after surgical resection. Typically, the technique of external beam radiation is viaIntensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT). When treating brain tumors close to critical structures within the brain which are more sensitive to radiation damage, such as the nerves of the eyes or the brainstem, IMRT can be used to limit the dose to these structures. IMRT is not beneficial in every case and your physician can discuss this treatment option with you further.

Radiation therapy can also be given to a very focused area of the brain using a technique called stereotactic radiosurgery. Stereotactic radiosurgery requires a patient to have a head frame attached, so that a precise map can be made of the patient's head. Radiation is then focused from a variety of different angles to deliver a large radiation dose to the tumor or tumor bed. This can be performed using the same machine that delivers external beam radiation or by a special machine called a gamma knife.

Your radiation oncologist can answer questions about the utility, process, and side effects of any of the above mentioned types of radiation and can recommend the best type of radiation therapy in your particular case.

Follow-up testing

Once a patient has been treated for a brain tumor, he or she needs to be closely followed for a recurrence. At first, the patient will have follow-up visits fairly often. The longer he or she is free of disease, the less often he or she will have to go for checkups with examinations. The doctor will decide when to obtain follow-up MRI scans.

Clinical trials are extremely important in furthering our knowledge of this disease. It is through clinical trials that we know what we do today, and many exciting new therapies are currently being tested. Talk to your doctor about participating in clinical trials in your area.

This article is meant to give you a better understanding of brain tumors. Use this knowledge when meeting with your physician, making treatment decisions, and continuing your search for information. You can learn more about other brain tumors on OncoLink through the related links to the left.