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Important Points Regarding Primary Brain Tumors
Brain tumors are different!
Brain tumors may not be cancers.
They grow only in the brain itself, and almost never travel beyond the brain.
They don't metastasize. Treatment should be limited to the brain.
Benign is not always "benign." Low grade gliomas, although called benign, often grow inexorably, albeit slowly.
They involve the whole brain. Even though they seem to grow locally, tumor cells travel around the brain and are always found beyond the tumor margins, even on the opposite side of the brain.
Benign tumors may be malignant by location -- easy tumors in tough places.
True tumor margins do not exist. Total removal by local therapy (surgery, radiation, heat, cold, etc.) is not possible.
The brain is immunologically isolated.
The Blood:Brain barrier is real.
Many helpful treatments can't enter the brain via the bloodstream.
Primary brain tumors are polyclonal. They are actually many tumors in one (sometimes over a thousand!)
Each clone has differing sensitivity (or resistance) to anti-tumor treatments.
Each clone has its own cell cycle time, doubling time, etc.
With these observations in mind, the therapy of primary brain tumors has been sharply focused, because only the brain needs to be treated, not the entire body.
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