jamilla
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Posts:2
I am so relieved to find this site. I am South African and want to make sure I am getting world standard care.
Breast primary diagnosed 7.5 years ago. Stage 4 from start with to date a symptomatic bone mets. Currently disease stable in lung, bone marrow and bone. Brain tumor removed 6 months ago. Feeling the best I have in 2 years. Now find reoccurrence of brain met due to double vision. What are my treatment options? Devastated. Thank you for your help.
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Reply # - November 12, 2013, 02:30 PM
Reply To: Brain met reoccurrence 6 months post craniotomy /
jamilla,
I'm sorry to hear of the recurrent brain met. In general, the most effective treatments for brain mets are surgery and radiation. If this is a recurrence in the same spot as the resected tumor, it might be possible to use stereotactic radiation on that tumor. Or whole brain radiation might be used, especially if there are more than a few brain mets. You can read about these options in Dr. Loiselle's post on brain met treatment (aimed at lung cancer patients, but the principles are the same): http://cancergrace.org/radiation/2011/08/17/treatment-for-solitary-brai…
JimC
Forum moderator
Reply # - November 12, 2013, 08:29 PM
Reply To: Brain met reoccurrence 6 months post craniotomy /
Dr. Loiselle's post provides a very good summary, and you may also want to check out this podcast with a summary of treatment options (focusing on lung cancer metastatic to brain, but the approach is really pretty much the same for other cancers in which you see brain metastases).
http://cancergrace.org/radiation/2011/04/29/dr-minesh-mehta-radiation-o…
Good luck.
-Dr. West
Reply # - November 15, 2013, 02:01 AM
Reply To: Brain met reoccurrence 6 months post craniotomy /
Thank you so much for your quick replies. I cannot express deeply enough how relieved I am to have "friends" and such well respected assistance and advice. The good news is I met with a specialist yesterday who provides Stereotactic radiation treatment and it is his opinion that we can easily treat this reoccurrence. He suggest 4 sessions over 2 weeks on the Varian LINAC machine. My question is whether long term experience of planning on this machine is important.? We have not had it long in South Frica and while I know he and his team will be well trained, they won't have been working long on the machine. I do have the option of finding a treatment centre in Europe and wondered whether you think this might be a better option for me?
Thank you sooooooo much
Sally x x x x x x x
Reply # - November 15, 2013, 05:08 PM
Reply To: Brain met reoccurrence 6 months post craniotomy /
I don't think there's good evidence to address this. Many aspects of radiation oncology are experience-dependent, but the specialty centers often become very experienced very quickly and often start with some of the best trained people. I think the learning curve is steep and reaches a point of diminishing returns quickly.
Good luck.
-Dr. West