Brain tumors, also known as intracranial tumors, are called primary intracranial tumors when they occur in the brain, meninges, pituitary gland, cranial nerves, cerebral blood vessels and embryonic remnants of tissue. Many patients have a situation that the tumor is too big, which causes increased risk of surgery; or the tumor has metastasized due to missing the best treatment period, and it is no longer possible to perform surgery. In fact, most brain tumors have some “first signs” at the early stage of development, so early detection of tumors and effective treatment can help us recover health faster. So what are the aura symptoms of brain tumor?
1.Progressive aggravation of headache
Seeing here, do you think headache is brain tumor? In fact, we often have headache in our life, such as cold and flu, poor sleep and stress, but it does not mean brain tumor. The headache caused by brain tumor is a progressive headache, which will aggravate as the tumor grows and causes the increase of intracranial pressure, while the headache caused by other reasons will disappear on its own after the primary cause gets better (e.g. after recovering from cold).
2. Visual field loss, vision loss, diplopia
Brain tumor compressing bilateral optic nerve causes some patients to have vision loss, visual field defect or diplopia (i.e., the two eyes cannot overlap each other and see any object in double shadow). The most common ones are tumors in the saddle area, such as pituitary tumor, craniopharyngioma, meningioma, and less common ones such as cholesteatoma, arachnoid cyst, etc.
3.Unilateral tinnitus or hearing loss
Unilateral hearing loss, because it does not affect daily life, is often not easily detected. However, if there is a longer period of unilateral tinnitus before the unilateral hearing loss, you should be highly alert! Unilateral tinnitus is the earliest and most common “warning” of auditory neuroma. If detected early and the tumor is small, it can be treated with Gamma Knife (a kind of radiotherapy) to avoid the pain of open surgery.
4.Decreased sense of smell
If you happen to find one or both sides of the olfactory sensation decrease, besides going to the five sensory departments, you should highly suspect intracranial lesions involving the olfactory nerve, such as anterior olfactory groove meningioma, olfactory cell tumor, etc.
5. Amenorrhea, lactation or decreased sexual function
Amenorrhea and lactation in women of childbearing age are often the first symptoms of pituitary tumors. In men, the main symptoms are impotence, loss of pubic hair, axillary hair and beard, thickening of subcutaneous fat or decrease of sexual function.
6.Walking instability
There are many reasons for unstable walking, the most common one related to intracranial occupational lesion is cerebellar tumor, which manifests as unstable walking in a straight line and uncoordinated finger movements.
7.Monocular protrusion
This means that one side of the eye protrudes forward, which can affect the eyelid in severe cases and cause lid fissure and incomplete eyelid closure. In 50% of cases of unilateral eye protrusion, it is caused by intracranial disorders, and the most common cause is brain tumor.
8. One-side muscle weakness or numbness
Unilateral limb weakness or numbness may be caused by lesions involving intracranial motor or sensory functional areas, or by spinal cord lesions.
9. Seizure
If the seizure is confined to one side or started by one limb, brain tumor should be considered in both adults and children.
Warm tip: If the above symptoms occur, besides going to the department with the corresponding symptoms for examination (e.g. vision loss to ophthalmology, bad smell and hearing to quinturology, etc.), it is recommended to go to neurosurgery or neurology (neurology) for specialist examination, and it is better to do an MRI plain scan examination first, so that most of the intracranial lesions can be detected.