1. What is a brain tumor? What is the incidence rate?
According to a group of domestic statistics, its incidence rate is 1,34/100,000, while that of foreign countries is 9~10/100,000. Among the incidence rate of whole body tumors, the incidence rate of brain tumor is second only to that of stomach, uterus, breast and esophagus tumors, accounting for about 2% of the whole body tumors.
2. What are the common brain tumors?
Brain tumors are benign and malignant. Common benign brain tumors include pituitary tumor, meningioma, auditory neuroma, etc. These tumors generally have better treatment effect. The common malignant brain tumors include glioma, crossblastoma, and medulloblastoma, which are more common in children. These tumors grow aggressively, just like dendritic growth, and are difficult to be removed cleanly.
3. What are the early signs of brain tumor?
Brain is a very complex and important organ, the signs and symptoms of brain tumor vary from patient to patient, which is related to the size, nature and location of the tumor;
(1) Headache: it is more severe in nature, often occurs in the early morning, sometimes waking up in sleep, but the headache will be gradually relieved or disappeared after getting up with light activities.
(2) Vomiting: due to the increase in intracranial pressure, the medulla oblongata respiratory center is stimulated, resulting in vomiting, vomiting mostly occurs after the headache, in the form of jets.
(3) vision loss: increased intracranial pressure can cause poor venous blood flow back to the eye, resulting in bruising and edema, which can damage the visual cells in the retina of the eye, resulting in vision loss.
(4) Mental abnormalities: brain tumors located in the frontal lobe of the brain can destroy the mental activity of the frontal lobe, causing excitement and agitation.
(4) Mental abnormalities: Brain tumors located in the frontal lobe of the brain can disrupt the mental activity of the frontal lobe, causing mental abnormalities such as excitement, agitation, depression, depression, amnesia, and fiction.
(5) Seizures.
(6) One or unilateral limb sensory and motor abnormalities: The parietal lobe located in the middle of the cerebral hemisphere is specialized in sensation, and tumors in this area often cause unilateral limb pain, temperature, vibration, and form discrimination or loss of sensation.
(7) Phantom smell: tumor in the temporal lobe can cause phantom smell under its stimulation, i.e. smell an odor that does not exist, such as burnt rice or burnt rubber, etc.
(7) Hemiplegia or drunken gait: cerebellar lesions are more specific, i.e. patients often have hemiplegia or staggering drunken gait after headache, vomiting and visual impairment.
(9) Tinnitus, deafness: this is often detected when talking on the phone, i.e., one ear can hear, but the other ear cannot hear.
(10) Giantism or dwarfism: Giantism is mostly seen in pituitary tumor, which is characterized by rapid growth and acromegaly (large chin, large nose, enlarged lips and tongue, and abnormally large hands and feet); dwarfism is commonly seen in craniopharyngioma, which is characterized by a 15- or 16-year-old body that is only five or six years old, undeveloped sexual characteristics, and a belly full of fat, which looks like “teenage fat”.
4. How to diagnose brain tumor early
In real life, most people lack understanding of brain tumor, many patients do not get early diagnosis and treatment in time and their lives are cut short, some delay the consultation time and make the tumor grow very big, which makes it more difficult for surgeons and increases the risk and medical expenses for patients. It should be detected as early as possible, diagnosed early and treated reasonably early. Then how to achieve early detection and early diagnosis? When the brain tumor signs mentioned just now appear, you must go to a hospital with neurosurgery specialty, let the specialist conduct a comprehensive physical examination and analyze the condition, and focus on some necessary auxiliary examinations, such as cranial X-ray, EEG, lumbar puncture and cerebrospinal fluid examination, CT, magnetic resonance imaging and angiography, etc., and finally make a diagnosis.
5. What are the hazards of brain tumor to body?
(1) Destructive effect: Especially malignant tumors and metastatic tumors, which grow invasively, cause serious damage to normal brain tissue and loss of brain tissue function.
(2) Compression: Mostly seen in benign tumors, but also seen in malignant tumors, tumors constitute compression to normal brain tissues, causing local ischemic degeneration, resulting in impairment of normal functions.
(3) Brain edema: tumor produces many toxins causing edema and swelling of brain, resulting in increased cranial pressure.
(4) Tumor increases in size and even affects cerebrospinal fluid circulation causing hydrocephalus plus cerebral edema, which increases cranial pressure abnormally and exceeds the ability of cranial cavity to reward, affecting the respiratory and heartbeat center and causing death.
6. What are the treatment methods of brain tumor and how to choose
The treatment of brain tumor at home and abroad preferably adopts surgery, while chemotherapy, radiotherapy, X-knife, γ-knife, etc., but most of them are difficult to cure. The treatment has strict indications, which are suitable for tumors not easily larger than 3cm, tumors growing in brainstem, thalamus and other important parts that are difficult or inoperable, as well as residual tumors after surgery, as for chemotherapy and radiotherapy, they are only an auxiliary means to shrink the tumor or control the growth in a short period of time, simply using γ-knife, X-knife and radiotherapy is not possible to kill the tumor completely. Therefore, most patients will still have recurrence after surgery.
7. How the brain tumor is removed
Most patients have great concerns about open brain tumor resection, thinking that it requires a big uncover. This is because brain tumor surgery is performed through the normal brain space to reach the tumor growth site according to a certain access, which of course must be operated under a microscope, and the operator must have good microscopic skills to accomplish this. Some patients’ families ask to see how many tumors are cut down and how big the tumors are. In fact, only a small part of the tumors can be seen by the families, while most of the tumors are sucked away by common suction device or ultrasonic suction device, and part of the tumors are taken out by special instruments, because the operation space is very small, it is impossible to take out the whole tumors, especially for deep brain tumors.
8. How is the effect of brain tumor treatment? Why will it recur?
Benign brain tumor usually has envelope and clear boundary with brain tissue, so it is easy to be removed cleanly and can survive for a long time after surgery, but some tumors are located in the deep part, so it is difficult to reveal the tumor during surgery. Therefore, recurrence can occur.
Malignant tumors such as glioma, which grows like tree roots and has no obvious boundary with brain tissue, can only be removed from the main body of the tumor during resection, so recurrence is inevitable. However, we should not be too pessimistic about malignant tumors. The survival period and recurrence time of patients are related to the degree of malignancy and biological characteristics of tumors.