I don't see Gamma Knife being discussed here in order to reduce the size of the residual remaining tumor, I only see chemotherapy...? Having survived my 6 month prognosis - for the last 8 years, I highly recommend he look into this! Utilize an ambolization to cut off blood supply to the remaining tumor, and gamma knife treatment to reduce/stop further growth. Oh my you have to monitor it yearly with an MRI, it sure beats being sick for weeks on end with the Chemo... Check into it, it may save your life!
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Under the Knife
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What would a patient like Senator Kennedy have to be most concerned about after the surgery?
[Doctors] should know pretty much right away if he comes out of surgery with a significant speech or motor function problem. They'll know by the next day if he has a problem with speech by testing him, based on whether he's able to generate speech, comprehend what's being said to him, repeat sentences and read. [His] tumor is on the left side of the brain and, since the pathways are crisscrossed, they're going to look for weakness and numbness on the right side of his body. The first 24 hours are crucial as well, to make sure there's not any problem as far as bleeding in the area where the surgery was performed. Most patients go home within three or four days of the surgery.
Do patients often have misconceptions about the surgery?
The idea of brain surgery immediately implies to people that the risks are exceedingly high, because the public has a perception of brain surgery as being the most intricate and delicate, and that the risk for complication is very high. They think brain surgery is reserved for when it's the only option left. But when you're faced with tumors specifically, surgery is very safe and very effective, and carries with it the highest hope for potential cure. I think the risks are usually exaggerated.
What's your take on some of the new developments in the field, such as
vaccines
? Do any look viable?
Unfortunately, none of those techniques have been shown to be of any significant benefit. There are chemotherapeutic agents that [were] approved in 2005 or 2006 that were shown to confer survival benefit. Beyond that, everything else is considered somewhat experimental, but it's still something reasonable for patients to consider because of the poor prognosis of this tumor. I think with gene therapy, we're not quite there yet. Immunotherapy [a method of stimulating the production of white blood cells to target cancer cells] is a reasonable potential treatment option, and it's attractive because it uses your own immune system to attack the tumor. The limitation with chemotherapeutic agents is that there's a barrier between the brain and the blood that restricts those agents from entering into the brain tissue where you need the effects. Any way that we could manipulate that blood-brain barrier would potentially be an advancement.
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