How to treat head tumor

How to treat head tumors? Once diagnosed with head tumors, many patients think they have received a death notice. In fact, brain tumors are not as terrible as we think. With the advancement and development of medical technology, some head tumors can be treated. Even if they cannot be cured, they can increase the patient's life expectancy. So, how to treat head tumors?

Benign brain tumors mainly include: meningioma, schwannoma and pituitary tumor, etc.; malignant brain tumors mainly include glioma, germ cell tumor and metastatic tumor, etc. Benign brain tumors grow slowly and most of them can be cured. Malignant brain tumors are the opposite, growing rapidly and difficult to cure. But this is not absolute. Some benign tumors grow deep and are already very large when they are discovered, so they cannot be completely removed by surgery. Some malignant tumors grow in unimportant brain tissues, so they can almost be completely removed by surgery, or even cured.

At present, the concept of chemotherapy has been extended to cytotoxic agents, anti-angiogenic drugs, cell differentiation drugs, anti-invasive drugs and cell signal transduction regulators. Chemotherapy should be started as early as possible after surgery, and chemotherapy is often used before postoperative radiotherapy or both. Drugs with high lipid solubility, small molecular weight, non-ionization, short action time, ability to pass the blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier and low toxicity to normal brain tissue are suitable for the treatment of intracranial tumors.

Temozolomide, a representative new chemotherapy drug for brain tumors, is used for 5 consecutive days, with 28 days as one cycle. It is mainly used to treat malignant glioblastoma and advanced malignant melanoma. Its advantages are a wide anti-tumor spectrum, oral administration, rapid and complete absorption, easy penetration of the blood-brain barrier, no superimposed toxicity with other drugs, and can be used for patients resistant to nitrosoureas. Common side effects are malignancy and vomiting. Bone marrow suppression occurs when the oral dose is greater than 1200 mg/m2.

Surgery is the most basic and effective treatment for head tumors. All parts that can be reached by surgery should be completely or substantially removed without causing major neurological dysfunction. Surgical treatment of brain tumors includes tumor resection, internal decompression, external decompression, and shortcut surgery. Due to the development of microneurosurgical technology, most benign brain tumors can now be completely removed and neurological function can be well protected.

Even for malignant tumors, surgical removal of the tumor plus other treatments can achieve better results. Partial removal of the tumor to reduce the size of the tumor or decompress the internal and external parts, cerebrospinal fluid shunt and other palliative surgeries can temporarily relieve high pressure in the brain, gain time for other treatments, and prolong the patient's survival time.