Overview of Brain Tumors

A brain tumor is a growth in your brain that may or may not be cancer. Brain tumors may start in your brain or may have spread to your brain (metastasized) from another part of your body.

• Brain tumors can cause serious problems even if they aren’t cancer, because your skull is hard and there's no space for the tumor to grow

• As a brain tumor grows, it pushes on your brain and raises the pressure inside your skull, which can affect your entire brain and be quickly fatal

• Brain tumors cause different symptoms depending on where they are in your brain

• Common symptoms include headaches, personality changes, loss of balance, trouble concentrating, seizures, and clumsiness

• In older people, brain tumor symptoms may be mistaken for dementia

• Treatments may include surgery, radiation therapy, or chemotherapy

Brain tumor symptoms may start suddenly or develop slowly over time. Symptoms include:

• Headaches, especially if they happen more often or get worse when you lie down

• Problems with mental function and mood, such as becoming withdrawn, moody, drowsy, or confused, or acting in ways that are a change from your usual personality

• Feeling sick to your stomach and throwing up

• Blurred vision

• Dizziness, loss of balance, and clumsiness

• Seizures

• Being sleepy and confused

Depending on which area of the brain the tumor is in, it may affect:

• Movement of an arm, a leg, or one side of your body

• Speaking or understanding language

• Your sense of hearing, smell, or sight

Doctors do tests such as:

• MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) of the head

• CT (computed tomography) scan of the head

• Spinal tap (doctors take out a small amount of fluid around the brain and spinal cord, using a needle placed in your lower back, to run tests on and look at under a microscope)

Sometimes doctors can tell what kind of tumor it is from the MRI or CT scan. Sometimes doctors do a biopsy of the tumor (take out part of the tissue to look at under a microscope).

Doctors treat a brain tumor based on where it is and the symptoms you're having. Unlike tumors in other parts of your body, whether a brain tumor is a cancer or not isn't as important. Noncancerous tumors can cause severe brain problems too. Treatments include:

• Surgery to remove the tumor

• Radiation therapy

• Chemotherapy

If you have a very small, noncancerous tumor that isn't causing many symptoms, doctors may leave it alone.