Name: Sneha Thakur
Location: Mumbai
Question: Does phone radiations or any electrical gadget radiation be a cause for Brain Tumor?
Answer:There is no scientific reason that phone radiation or any electrical gadget radiation can lead to brain tumor. For years people belived that the cellular phone could cause brain tumors but numerous studies have been carried out-long follow-up of more than 10 years and there has been no conclusive evidence for the same. Similarly, with electrical gadgets as with microwaves, there is no conclusive proof that it can cause cancer. When one eats food made warm in a microwave or walk in front of a microwave and get exposed to the microwaves, they are basically non-ionised radiations. However, my advice is that whenever you use a cellular phone, try not to keep it near your ear for a longer time or even when you are sleeping you should not keep it next to you due to electromagnetic waves that are activated from a cellphone.
Name: Joyal K Mohan
Location: Mumbai
Question: Does lack of sleep contribute to brain tumor?
Answer:There is no conclusive evidence that lack of sleep can be responsible or causative effect for brain tumors. However, the corollary is true, many often people with brain tumors have disturbed sleep patterns.
Name: Praveen Nair
Location: Kannur
Question: What are the treatment possibilities?
Answer:Brain tumors are usually treated with brain surgery or radiotherapy. Chemotherapy may be added at times to potentiate the effects of radiotherapy. Chemotherapy can be conventional, targeted or immunotherapy. The best form of treatment depends on the type of tumor. Brain tumors are of various types; they can be benign or non-cancerous or cancerous. The types may also depend on the part of the brain that is affected. Some brain parts are critical, making surgery impossible. In the spectrum of benign tumors, there are meningiomas, one of the commonest benign brain tumors. Very often, these may not require any treatment and we sometimes just observe them for a year to see the rate of growth. When these are in critical areas, we offer surgery.
Name: Khaja Mohideen
Location: Tenkasi
Question: If a tumor is removed is there a chance that it will appear again?
Answer: Yes, brain tumors can recur after surgery. The brain is a very critical organ of the body unlike other cancers where you can excise tumors with clear or wide margins. In the brain, the more you excise into normal tissue, the more the deficit, both motor i.e., movement and sensory or sensations. Moreover, some of these cancers are very aggressive so we take out much of the tumor as possible and we prevent its regrowth through a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, or chemotherapy or radiotherapy given separately. But the chances that it will recur are very high. Very often these high-grade gliobastomas multiformae, which is like a grade 4 brain tumor, recurs within the first 1 or 2 years.
Name: Hema Chavan
Location: Pune
Question: What is the remission rate like in cases of brain tumors?
Answer:The brain tumors are unfortunately very aggressive. Now we must understand that brain tumors could be those which are benign and low grade and those which are aggressive or astrocytomas-grade 4 astrocytoma which is also called gliobastoma multiformae. In the grade 4 aggressive brain tumors, the longevity is very limited as the tumors grow very fast whereas surgeons, we are not able to remove all of the tumor. After aggressive debulking surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy are given and patients usually live for a couple of years. For intermediate or low-grade tumors, this can be longer. For benign tumors, it depends on the location and how much we can remove. If we can remove all and it is not in a very important part of the brain, then patients do well. But by and large most brain tumors are aggressive, and they recur very fast. When I say this, I mean malignant brain tumors such as meningiomas.
Name: Rubin Joseph
Location: Bangalore
Question: Can exercise help in brain tumor recovery? If so, could you suggest some exercises?
Answer:Exercise will not help recover from a brain tumor, but exercise is important to rehabilitate one particularly for treatment related side effects. So, it depends on which part of the brain was removed and which part of the body was affected due to this damage. Exercises that target the specific group of muscles are prescribed. Physiotherapy helps you in the rehabilitation phase. There is no particular exercise, it varies according to the signs and symptoms and the part of the human body that has been affected due to the tumor or because of treatment side effects.
Name: Shabin Elias
Location: Mangalore
Question: Could throwing up/ nausea be a sign of brain tumor?
Answer:Yes, unexplained throwing up/nausea/vomiting could be a sign of brain tumor. This is because a brain tumor raises the intracranial pressure and therefore patients may vomit. It is often called projectile vomiting and not like other common forms of vomiting. The other signs and symptoms of brain tumors are headaches, blurring of vision, weakness of the body, altered gait-all related to pressure on the brain, which part it affects as well as raised intracranial pressure.
