Advances in Mental Health

Brain tumors form abnormal cells, which grow inside and around your brain. These abnormal cells have the capacity to damage and destroy your healthy brain cells. They overcrowd other parts of your brain and initiate brain swelling along with inflammation while building up pressure within your skull. Diagnostic findings of the abnormal cells will prove to be either benign or malignant. It's the malignant cells that will cause problems since these cells rapidly grow and quickly invade areas of your brain that are healthy. Benign brain tumors are less deadly, since they are noncancerous and grow slowly. There are two different categories of brain tumors, and you should learn as much as you can about brain tumor treatments.

Two Categories of Brain Tumors

If you are diagnosed with a metastatic brain tumor, then the cancerous tumor cells originated in another part of your body and thereafter metastasized to your brain. A primary brain tumor, on the other hand, means the tumor initiated within your brain. Your primary brain tumor can be potentially benign or malignant. Malignant cancer cells in both categories will be microscopically examined to analytically determine the degree of cell malignancy. An examination of cell growth and blood supply as well as a search for evidence of tumor necrosis is taken into account before treatment type is explored. Innovative techniques of administering radiation therapy treatments have emerged.

New Radiation Technique and Conventional Radiation Therapy

Radiation technique offers the option of targeting your brain tumor for treatment without harming your healthy tissues that lay nearby. This technique is utilized either by using intensity-modulated radiation therapy, brachytherapy or radiosurgery. You can also be treated with conventional radiation therapy that destroys tumor cancer cells and shrink your brain tumor. In the latter case, external beams of gamma rays, x-rays or protons take direct aim at the tumors during treatment sessions that will last over a period of several weeks. You could also be given whole brain radiation therapy if you have more than one brain tumor that can't be easily targeted for localized treatment.

Experimental Drugs and New Therapies

As new technology emerges, you could find that new experimental drugs as well as new therapies offer good outcomes for your quality of life and survival. Working their way through clinical trials are angiogenesis inhibitors that stunt the growth of blood vessels and block tumors from receiving oxygen and nutrients. Re-irradiation therapy, which is repetitive radiotherapy, treatment procedures are right now in place and being used for your recurrent brain tumors and particularly so for glioblastomas. Researchers also comment about new classes of biological agents for use against prospective tumor cell metabolism and signaling.

Discuss New Radiation Techniques

As brain tumor technology evolves, talk with a radiology oncologist like those at Allegheny Brain And Spine Surgeons and ask questions about which of the new technologies would best fit your treatment plans.