Causes of Brain Cancer and Symptoms of Brain Cancer

Also called: Glioma, Meningioma

There are two main types of brain cancer. Primary brain cancer starts in the brain. Metastatic brain cancer starts somewhere else in the body and moves to the brain. Brain tumors can be benign, with no cancer cells, or malignant, with cancer cells that grow quickly.

Causes and Risk Factors

Aside from a known association with exposure to vinyl chloride, there are no known chemical or environmental agents that lead to the development of brain tumors.

The following factors have been proposed as possible risk factors for primary brain tumors. Whether these factors actually increase the risk of a brain tumor is not known for sure.

Radiation to the head

An inherited (genetic) risk
HIV infection

Meningioma
Neuroblastoma
Oligodendroglioma
Pineoblastoma

Immune System Disorders

People with impaired immune systems have an increased risk of developing lymphomas of the brain or spinal cord. Lymphomas are cancers of lymphocytes, a type of cell of the immune system. Lymphomas usually form in lymph nodes.

Symptoms of Brain Cancer:

The specific symptoms vary, but may include:

Headache -- continues and is worse when the child wakes up
Vomiting -- more severe in the morning
Nausea
Personality and behavior changes
Persistent drownsiness
Incontinence
Crossed eyes

Abnormal eye movements or changes in vision
Drowsiness
Changes in personality or memory
Changes in speech

Localized weakness or sensory loss due to invasion or compression of adjacent brain tissue
The resultant neurologic loss dependant on the location of the tumour

Nausea and Vomiting: As with headaches, these are non-specific - which means that most people who have nausea and vomiting do NOT have a brain tumor. Twenty-two percent of the people in our survey reported that they had nausea and /or vomiting as a symptom.

Cancer Treatment

Surgery

Surgery is the treatment of choice for accessible primary brain tumors, when the patient is in good health. The goal of surgery is to remove as much of the tumor as possible without damaging nearby normal brain tissue. The prognosis improves when more than 90% of a tumor can be removed.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is medication which is used as a complementary tool to eliminate remaining cancer cells in the body. A child or teen with cancer is usually given the chemotherapy drugs intravenously (through a vein) or orally (by mouth).

Radiation therapy

Radiation therapy, also called radiotherapy, is the use of high-powered rays to damage cancer cells and stop them from growing. It is often used to destroy tumor tissue that cannot be removed with surgery or to kill cancer cells that may remain after surgery. Radiation therapy also is used when surgery is not possible.

Follow-up testing

Once a patient has been treated for a brain tumor, he or she needs to be closely followed for a recurrence. At first, the patient will have follow-up visits fairly often. The longer he or she is free of disease, the less often he or she will have to go for checkups with examinations. The doctor will decide when to obtain follow-up MRI scans or PET scans.