Functional and restorative neurosurgery uses cutting-edge technology to restore lost neurological function or prevent further functional declines. These technologies include:
People with brain tumors have several treatment options. The options are surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. Many people get a combination of treatments.
The choice of treatment depends mainly on the following:
For some types of brain cancer, the doctor also needs to know whether cancer cells were found in the cerebrospinal fluid.
Surgery
Surgery is the usual first treatment for most brain tumors. Before surgery begins, you may be given general anesthesia, and your scalp is shaved. You probably won't need your entire head shaved.
Surgery to open the skull is called a craniotomy. The surgeon makes an incision in your scalp and uses a special type of saw to remove a piece of bone from the skull.
Radiation Therapy
Radiation therapy kills brain tumor cells with high-energy x-rays, gamma rays, or protons.
Radiation therapy usually follows surgery. The radiation kills tumor cells that may remain in the area. Sometimes, people who can't have surgery have radiation therapy instead.
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy, the use of drugs to kill cancer cells, is sometimes used to treat brain tumors.
This answer is based on source information from the National Cancer Institute.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with and without contrast is a common tool for diagnosing brain tumors. There’s also surgery, whether it be a biopsy, a subtotal resection (incomplete resection), a near-total resection or a gross-total resection (complete resection). These are all helpful for pathology, so doctors can look under the microscope and determine what exactly the tumor is.
Benign tumors are unlikely to return after removal, but if they do, they're slow-growing.
The risk factors for brain tumors are radiation and smoking, but they can occur with no known cause.
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric condition with problems in thought for a person without a brain tumor. Sometimes, though, when a brain tumor is large and occurs in the brain’s area of personality and thought, it can be possible for the tumor to disrupt personality and thinking. This may result in symptoms that mimic schizophrenia.
Brain tumors can affect the body in different ways, depending on the location. It can cause numbness or weakness in the face, arm, leg or torso. It can cause imbalance, poor coordination of the arms or legs, blindness, hearing loss, vertigo or decrease the ability to speak or understand language. It can cause headache especially if there is associated increased pressure in the brain. It can also cause changes in behavior and seizures.
Subependymal giant cell astrocytoma (SEGA) is a noncancerous brain tumor. It can cause problems by growing. One of the main problems it can cause is obstruction of the brain fluid from being normally circulated throughout the brain. An obstruction of the brain fluid can cause a very serious and sometimes life-threatening problem where surgery may be needed right away. But if this is detected early and followed, most of the time it can be treated with a specific medication called everolimus. This tends to shrink the tumors the vast majority of the time. If that doesn't work, then surgery is always an option.