School-age children need to be alert to medulloblastoma

Mingming is the apple of his parents' eyes. In the blink of an eye, the child is already 7 years old and of school age. During the physical examination before school, the doctor told his father that Xiaoming's eyesight was not very good and recommended that he go to the hospital for further examination to avoid delaying the child's health. Xiaoming's father thought to himself: the child's eyes are always blurry and he can't see things clearly. Sometimes applying eye drops can slightly alleviate it. Is there a problem? The father was anxious and took Mingming to the hospital for a detailed examination. The result was a diagnosis of childhood medulloblastoma.

Medulloblastoma is a relatively common type of brain cancer, especially in children. Due to the lack of specific manifestations in the early stages of the disease and the inability of children to express themselves clearly, parents may not pay attention to or ignore symptoms such as headaches, vomiting, and visual impairment, thinking that they are normal discomforts, which endangers the child's life safety.

The course of medulloblastoma is short, which is determined by the biological characteristics of the tumor. Nearly half of the patients have a course of less than 1 month, and a few can last for several years. The course of the disease is generally 4 to 5 months, and it becomes longer as the patient's age increases.

Therefore, parents must take responsibility and care about their children's growth process. For preschool or school-age children, especially boys, if they have unexplained headaches, vomiting, and then unstable gait, nystagmus, diplopia, etc., they should go to the hospital for examination immediately. It is very likely that medulloblastoma is causing the problem. Further neuroradiological examinations should be performed to confirm the diagnosis and find the exfoliated tumor cells in the cerebrospinal fluid of the child to confirm the diagnosis and effectively treat it.