Types of Brain Tumor Treatment
What is the treatment of brain tumors?
Are used anticonvulsants and corticosteroids as supportive therapy in some patients.
Definitive treatment includes surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
In low grade gliomas the recommended treatment is surgery and radiation. We recommend intermediate-dose radiotherapy (50 Gy) and has been shown that the administration of radiation therapy in the postoperative period does not increase the survival of these patients with respect to administered when the disease progresses, but increases the time in which the tumor is controlled.
In high grade gliomas treatment has demonstrated improved survival is the combination of surgery (when feasible), radiation at a dose greater than in low grade gliomas and chemotherapy.
The postoperative treatment component has been shown greater benefit for radiation and for this reason it is recommended to administer an adequate dose (60 Gy) in a confined volume of sophisticated techniques to exclude outside the radiation field the largest proportion of healthy brain tissue avoid toxicity.
This uses various innovative techniques such as three-dimensional radiotherapy formed, radiation therapy with intensity modulation of the beam and stereotactic techniques. They have incorporated new chemotherapeutic drugs that have shown activity (15-30% response) in high-grade tumors such as temozolomide, taxanes, irinotecan.
Also recently approved in Spain the use of BCNU polymers (camurstine) that are deposited in the surgical cavity during surgery and are slowly releasing the drug to treat residual disease around the surgical bed.
The simultaneous combination of temozolomide and radiotherapy has shown a survival benefit versus exclusive radiotherapy in malignant gliomas. Also, the combination of molecular chemotherapy drugs (anti recipients of growth) and bevacizumab, are showing high response rates.
The treatment of brain metastases may be surgical (or symptomatic solitary metastasis) or radiosurgery (metastases less than 3 cm). This treatment is usually associated with radiotherapy of the entire cranial contents (radiotherapy holocraneal).
What about after treatment?
After completing the treatment should follow up of patients with brain MRI. Every 6 months in low grade gliomas and every 3 months for high grade gliomas.
There are two situations in which resonance is sometimes not identify with certainty the observed images. A relatively frequent occurrence in the follow-up period of a high-grade glioma on a low-grade glioma and the other is called the remarks after radiotherapy treatment of a residual lesion called necrosis that is indistinguishable from a high-grade tumor . In these circumstances you can use the PET that can solve thes