Types of Brain Cancer and Prognosis

types of brain cancer and prognosis via aans.org

Hello I'm dr. Matt Yuen I'm the chairman of neurosurgery at the University of North Carolina and the director of the brain tumor program at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer

Center today I'd like to talk with you about brain cancer or brain tumors particularly we'd like

to focus on tumors that start in the brain often called primary brain tumors or gliomas today

we're gonna talk about brain cancer or brain tumors there's several different types of brain

tumors and it's an important from the beginning to understand whether the tumor we're

discussing started in the brain we call that a primary brain tumor and the most common form

of that is a glioma or if the tumor spread to the brain from somewhere else and we call that a

metastatic brain tumor those often spread from other types of cancer like lung cancer breast

cancer or melanoma however any sort of tumor can spread to the brain this video is going to

focus on tumors that started in the brain rather than those that spread from somewhere else

 we'll have a separate presentation available to talk about the metastatic brain tumors now

there are about 75,000 primary brain tumors a year in the United States that's approximately

 25 to murrs for every hundred thousand people about one-third of those tumors are

malignant or cancerous tumors unfortunately about two-thirds of the tumors are benign

tumors again today I want to focus my comments on the cancerous or malignant brain tumors

 as a doctor who treats patients with malignant brain tumors I'm interested when I meet a new

 patient to learn many things about them and then about their tumor the most important

things for me to know about their tumor are the grade of the tumor and the type of the tooth

 so let me explain that in a little more detail we traditionally grade the tumors on a scale of

one to four and the grade one tumors are the lowest and the grade four are the most aggressive

 in general the grade of the tumor tends to track with the age of the patient so younger

patients in their teens or 20s are more likely to have a great one tumor the grade two tumors

 tend to occur in the 20s and 30s and the grade three and four tumors tend to happen in

people who are older grade is certainly a very important thing to to know about a patient in

their tumor when we're deciding on treatment and trying to give the patient information

about the tumor the other important thing to know is the type of tumor there are two main

types of tumors that occur in the brain the first are Astro CITIC tumors that's one type of

tumor in cell brain the astrocytes and the other are oligodendroglioma that's a couple of big

words that even I struggle with and so we frequently call these the A's and the O's the

astrocytes and the oligodendrocytes and those two types of cells are just cells that support the

 tissue in the brain the most important cells of the brain are the neurons that's what makes us

think and run and be ourselves but those neurons need help from other cells and those cells are

called the glia and the astrocytes and the oligodendrocytes are just members of that gweal

family so for every patient I meet once I get to know them and learn about their story I want

to know about their tumor what's the number great and then what is the letter the a or the o

that goes with this in general the lower the number and the more O in the tumor the better we

 are so a grade 2o tumor at the outset would be easier to treat than a grade 4 a 2 now the

naming of brain tumors can get very confusing very quickly but there probably a couple other

terms that would be useful for you to know as you learn about brain tumors grade 4 tumors are

often called glioblastoma or abbreviated GBM and so the grade 4 tumor are the GBM is the

most aggressive tumor and the low-grade tumor the grade 2 tumor would be the least

aggressive tumor from the spectrum of grade 2 3 4 tumors we've talked about a number of

different kinds of brain tumors from these primary brain tumors that can be grade two tumors

grade 3 grade 4 and can start from either the astrocytes which are the o the A's or they're all

the tender sites which are the O's all of these tumors regardless of the grade or the type of cell

 have treatment options and modalities that can be used to stop their growth some can be

removed others are treated with chemotherapy some are treated with radiation and many

receive a combination of this regardless of what type of tumor you or your family member or

friend has there's likely to be very good treatment options available to them and we'll get into that in just a minute.

Types of brain cancer and prognosis

Let's talk for a moment about the prognosis for patients diagnosed with brain tumors and once

we get through the first round of therapy of surgery and radiation chemotherapy what you can
expect to come in the months and years that lay ahead in general the diagnosis of brain

cancer is one that will need to stay active in your medical care the rest of your life by that I

mean that you'll have a team of doctors or a particular doctor who you identify as your brain

tumor doctor who will be following this they'll be in charge of ordering the appropriate scans

 modifying their therapy counseling you about what the appropriate treatment is in patients

who are doing very well this may just be a series of MRI scans in patients whose tumor has

progressed or grown it may mean changing therapies either to a different form of the same

 therapy a new chemo therapy or going back to radiation or surgery in a follow-up mode at

any point when the tumor starts to grow we revisit all of the treatment options the other

 important thing to be asking your physician is to make sure that they're constantly looking

for new treatments that are available we have things available to treat patients today that

 weren't routinely used three or five years ago we want to make sure that everybody's

treatment is based on the most available is based on the most current data and incorporates all of new treatment options. Next Types of Brain Cancer and Survival Rate

Tag:
brain cancer stages, benign brain tumor survival rate, stage 3 brain cancer survival rate, types of brain tumors, terminal brain cancer life expectancy, grade 2 brain tumor life expectancy, inoperable brain tumor survival rate, brain cancer stage 4 what to expect
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