RADIATION THERAPY FOR BRAIN TUMORS
Understanding Your Treatment Options

About Brain Tumors

All thought, memory, emotion, speech, sensation and motor function are connected to the brain. The spinal cord and cranial nerves carry and receive messages between the brain and the body.

There are two types of brain tumors:

• Primary — a tumor that begins in the brain.
  Primary brain tumors can be malignant or benign (noncancerous).
• Metastatic — a cancerous tumor that spreads to the brain from elsewhere in the body. Metastatic brain tumors are always malignant.

Primary tumors in the brain or spinal cord do not usually spread to distant organs.

Brain tumors cause damage because as they grow they can interfere with surrounding cells that serve critical roles in our everyday life.

General Risk Factors for Brain Tumors

Most brain and spinal cord tumors occur for no apparent reason and do not have any known risk factors. There is also no known proven method to prevent these tumors.

Facts about Brain Tumors

More than 40,000 Americans will be diagnosed with a primary brain tumor this year according to the Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States.

This year, an estimated nearly 200,000 Americans will be diagnosed with a brain or spinal cord tumor that has spread from somewhere else in the body.

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