In the outpatient clinic, it is found that when some patients find the tumor, the tumor has already grown to a large size, which brings more risks and complications to the surgery, and may also make the patient’s family spend more money. In fact, most of the intracranial tumors still have some “signs” at the early stage of the disease, but because of the lack of knowledge in this area, the early “warning” is ignored, so that the time of timely detection and treatment of the tumor is missed. Here we will discuss several common symptoms of intracranial tumors, and hope to be helpful to you. 1.Progressive aggravation of headache Do not be afraid to think that you have a brain tumor if you have a headache, in fact, it is very common for people to have headache in their life! Cold and flu will also have a headache, poor sleep, too much pressure will have a headache, bad mood may also have a headache. And many brain tumors don’t necessarily start out with headaches. The headache related to brain tumor is mainly caused by increased intracranial pressure, with the growth of tumor (or aggravation of hydrocephalus), the headache will be progressively aggravated; while the headache caused by other reasons will disappear on its own after the primary cause of the disease gets better (e.g., after the cold is cured). If the headache is accompanied by other symptoms, such as vomiting, vision loss, poor memory and slow reaction, or one of the following symptoms from 2 to 10, there is a high suspicion of intracranial tumor or other occupying lesions. Unilateral tinnitus or hearing loss Unilateral hearing loss is not easy to notice because it does not affect daily life. However, most of the tinnitus has a longer period of time before the hearing loss, which should be highly alert! Unilateral tinnitus is the earliest and most common “early warning” of acoustic neuroma, if found early, the tumor is very small, it can be treated by Gamma Knife, which can avoid the pain of surgery (there are some small acoustic neuromas with long term follow up after Gamma Knife, and then surgery). For patients with acoustic neuroma in clinic, many of the tumors are large, even compressing the brainstem and cerebellum, resulting in hydrocephalus or ataxia (incoordination of arms and legs). When I asked them about their medical history, basically, tinnitus appeared in the early stage on the side of the tumor, and then the hearing gradually declined, and they went to the doctor only when they became unstable in walking. Therefore, if unilateral tinnitus or hearing loss occurs, early medical treatment should be sought. Some patients with vision loss think that it is myopia or presbyopia and neglect further examination. Some patients go to ophthalmology, experienced ophthalmologists may think of intracranial problems and do an MRI, which results in the discovery of intracranial tumors. Some of them even visit ophthalmology repeatedly, and their vision is getting worse and worse, and even one side of the eye is blind, before they remember to do intracranial examination, at this time, the tumor is already very large, and may encircle the surrounding neurovascular, and the risk of surgery is greatly increased. Which intracranial tumors can affect vision loss? The most common tumors are saddle region tumors, such as pituitary tumor, craniopharyngioma, meningioma, and rare ones, such as cholesteatoma and arachnoid cyst, etc. Due to the compression of bilateral optic nerves, it will lead to bilateral vision loss, and some of them are more obvious on one side. Pterygoid crest meningiomas tend to affect the optic nerve on one side. Other tumors such as anterior skull base tumors and inferior optic mound tumors can also cause vision loss. There are patients with normal visual acuity examination, but they feel discomfort in vision, with flashing or double vision (diplopia), distortion, in addition to ophthalmology, they should also consider ruling out intracranial diseases, commonly, there are tumors on occipital lobe of visual center or visual conduction pathway, the most common one is glioma. 4.Decrease in sexual function or menstrual disorders or lactation Normal male adults, such as the decline in sexual function, part of the patient due to shyness not to go to the clinic, some to the male department to see the sex clinic, but the symptoms are not much better, until the vision loss, only to ophthalmology or neurosurgery, the radiographs found that pituitary tumors. Of course, not every pituitary tumor has a decrease in sexual function, here we are talking about prolactin-type pituitary tumors, men with decreased libido, hair sparse, female patients with menstrual disorders or with lactation, or even menopause. When the tumor grows up, it will compress the optic nerve and cause vision loss. Therefore, if the above mentioned sexual problems occur, don’t hesitate and be shy, go to the hospital and be alert of pituitary tumor! Decrease in sense of smell or phantom smell Decrease in sense of smell is usually hard to be found, if one side or both sides of the sense of smell is found by chance, in addition to seeing the Pentacenter, the intracranial lesions involving the olfactory nerve should be highly suspected, such as anterior base of the skull or olfactory groove meningiomas, olfactory cell tumors, or chordoma involving the anterior base of the skull, etc. If there is no bad smell around but smells bad, don’t hesitate to go to the hospital. If there is no odor around but smells strange odor, it may be a special manifestation of epilepsy, and should be highly alert to the tumor in the medial temporal lobe. 6, memory loss or slow response With the increase of age, some people will have memory loss or slow response, which is relatively common. However, if obvious progressive memory loss or slow reaction occurs in a relatively short period of time (e.g., half a year), or the above symptoms occur at a young age, intracranial lesions should be emphasized. Larger frontal-temporal or corpus callosum lesions (such as glioma) or chronic increased intracranial pressure (such as a variety of occupying slowly growing or hydrocephalus), do not necessarily have early and clear localization of symptoms or signs, but gradually manifested in memory or response to the slowness, decreased ability to compute (simple addition and subtraction are also miscalculated, such as calculating the number of 100-7 is equal to how much). The symptoms of such patients are often closely in contact with their loved ones first found and sent to the doctor, some were treated as Alzheimer’s disease and misdiagnosed! 7, unsteady walking There are many reasons for unsteady walking, the most common is cerebellar tumor related to intracranial occupying lesions, manifested as unsteady walking in a straight line, uncoordinated movement of fingers, etc. If the above symptoms occur, go to the neurosurgery department or neurology department in time to see a doctor. 8, one-sided muscle weakness or numbness One-sided limb weakness or numbness may be the lesion involved in intracranial motor function area or sensory function area, may also be caused by spinal cord lesions, it is recommended to go to the Department of Neurosurgery or Neurology for specialist examination as soon as possible. Secondary epilepsy refers to epilepsy that occurs in adults. If craniocerebral trauma is excluded, most of the epilepsy is caused by intracranial occupations, such as intracranial tumors or cerebral vascular malformations or parasitic granulomas, etc., which often require surgical treatment.