Types of Cancer

• Primary brain tumors or secondary brain tumors are the two ways to contract cancer. Primary tumors are in the brain tissue, and secondary tumors develop if the cancer begins elsewhere in the body and spreads to the brain.
  
  Most brain tumors are known as gliomas that are cells inside the nervous system. They can be described as low-grade, intermediate or high-grade, meaning slow to very aggressive. Obviously, you will not know there is a tumor in your brain, so you will need to rely on the symptoms. These can include:
  
  •Frequent headaches
  •Loss of appetite
  •Vomiting
  •Changes in mood and personality
  •Changes in ability to think and learn
  •Seizures.
  
  As the brain can affect everything from your walking to your eating, you will hopefully notice if you have any changes in your functioning.
  
  

Alternative Treatments

• The standard treatments for brain cancer include surgery, radiation or chemotherapy. However, it may be difficult to remove tumors within the brain. Therefore, you should consider other techniques. The type of tumor, the size and the location may determine the best treatment.
  Some options include radiotherapy, radiosurgery or medications. One option is stereotactic radio-surgery. In this procedure, radiation is targeted directly to the tumor with minimal exposure to surrounding brain tissues. To perform this procedure, a 3-D image is taken of the brain and with these images the radiation oncologist can directly insert the radiation into the tumor. The biggest advantage to this procedure is it is not invasive. There are no incisions and no hospital stay. And this procedure is performed in one visit, unlike radiotherapy, which involves multiple visits. Radiosurgery is usually performed if traditional surgery to remove the brain tumor is not possible, due to location and ease of removal. This may also be an appropriate procedure if the tumor is located in a vital area of the brain.
  
  Fractionated Stereotactic Radiotherapy is similar to radiosurgery, except you receive small daily doses of radiation on multiple occasions. The advantage of this technique is it minimizes damage to the brain tissue, which would usually be harmed by regular radiation treatments. In addition, in giving smaller doses, you may have fewer side effects, including nausea and fatigue.
  
  

Drug Therapy

• Finally another possible treatment is drug therapy, which is usually in the form of clinical trials. For example, one such drug being used to treat brain tumors is Avastin. This medication is given through an IV and it stops the formation of new blood vessels, essentially cutting off blood supply to the tumor and killing the tumor cells. Unfortunately, as these drugs are still in trial stages, they may not be available on a regular treatment basis.